How police understand youth offending at least partly informs their responses to it. It is therefore vital to document police implicit theories about youth offending. However, little previous research has examined this topic. This article addresses this gap by examining police implicit theories about youth crime and how it ought to be addressed. Using social control theory as an analytic framework, it critically examines 41 semi-structured qualitative interviews with police undertaken for a larger study in Queensland, Australia. A number of implications stem from the analysis, not the least of which is the disjuncture between police implicit theories of youth offending, and the localised, historicised and contextual realities of young people’s – especially marginalised young people’s – offending behaviour.
This article attempts to better contextualise the theoretical and empirical connections between pre-prison orientation of prisoners and their subsequent adaption and subjective experiences of imprisonment using the case study of Omega, a racial minority gang in the Singapore prisons. While the article traces the gang’s emergence to its marginality in both the mainstream and illegitimate societies, the persistence of Omega beyond prisons is also shown to lie in its capacity to be remodelled for the street where the gang operates on an equal footing with the historically entrenched Chinese Secret Societies in the illicit economy. This research is not only able to adequately explain the form and hierarchy of penal subcultures, and the differentiated strategies offered by the various racial, class and gender groups to ‘surviving’ prisons, but also shows how in-prison adaptations affect the construction of post-prison identities and behaviours. The intent is to provide a nuanced sociological examination of the prison institution by capturing the iterative and interactive effects between the ‘outside’ (i.e. street) and the ‘inside’ (i.e. prison), thus extending the analysis beyond the deprivation-importation impasse by introducing an element of ‘exportation’ that help contextualise the racialised experiences of minority prisoners in the postcolonial state.
Youth justice policies in Australia feature an overall welfare-oriented approach and an emphasis on diverting young people away from the justice system. Nevertheless, some young people, particularly those with complex needs, are incarcerated at a young age and are at greater risk of poor outcomes. This paper explores barriers to the use of diversion options by police through analysis of in-depth interviews with 25 police staff. Consistent with the previous literature, role constraints, workload and lack of specialist knowledge were discussed. This paper explores the interplay of these factors with values, beliefs and expectations about young offenders – many of which were framed by experiences of adversarial encounters with young people and damaged faith in the system to rehabilitate. Naturalistic decision-making scholarship is drawn on to identify the potential role of ‘schemas’ in police use of discretion and of practical strategies that may support welfare and rehabilitation-oriented police practice with young people.
Despite the well-documented under-reporting of sexual violence, to date, no research has considered reporting practices within the specific context of music festivals. Drawing on 16 in-depth interviews with victim-survivors, this article examines survivors’ experiences of (non)reporting sexual violence in festival settings. We argue that while some barriers to reporting are shared across contexts, others play out in context-specific ways. Our research argues that the liberal, often transgressive culture of music festivals, combined with site-specific policing practices and spatial context, creates unique impediments to reporting with particular implications in responding to, and aiming to prevent, sexual violence at music festivals.
Arts-based prison programs are often viewed as hobbies or as activities that have little impact on prisoner rehabilitation according to conventional understandings of the term. This is despite growing evidence that arts-based programs can assist with learning retention and can improve self-confidence and ways of coping with emotions. Generally, arts practices have been found to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have grown up or live in urban areas with asserting and strengthening their cultural identity, but we know little about the effects of arts-based prison programs on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoner wellbeing. This article focuses on a creative writing program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners at Junee Correctional Centre, New South Wales. The program, Dreaming Inside, has produced seven volumes of poetry and stories. This article combines and reports findings from two evaluations of the program, one using program feedback forms and the other using semi-structured interviews with prisoners who participated in the program. The themes that emerged from both evaluations affirm the program’s efficacy in improving prisoner self-esteem, confidence and wellbeing, and in reigniting and strengthening cultural engagement.
There are claims that the societal appetite for 'child exploitation material' is increasing. Yet, Australia's policy response does not include initiatives to dissuade potential offenders from deliberately viewing child exploitation material for the first time (onset). To critically examine this issue, this paper draws on Situational Crime Prevention theory. It argues that (a) many first-time child exploitation material viewers fit the Situational Crime Prevention construct of the Opportunistic Offender and (b) suggests that current policy overlooks the kinds of non-instrumental factors that increase the risk of onset for this group, including doubts about the criminality and harmfulness of viewing child exploitation material. The paper then empirically examines social attitudes to child exploitation material viewing by presenting the findings of a survey of 504 Australian internet users. Results indicate that a sizeable minority of the participants were: unaware that it is a crime to view certain types of child exploitation material in Australia; and held doubts about the harmfulness of viewing child exploitation material. These findings are used to reflect on how the presence of these non-instrumental factors among ordinary internet users may affect the offending readiness of the Opportunistic Offender. Policy implications are then briefly discussed.
The involvement in crime of some young Sudanese-born Victorians has received sustained public attention in recent years. The media coverage of these occurrences has been extensive, with some outlets criticised for sensationalist reporting and prejudiced undertones. A range of views were held across the commentariat including, for example, the notion that Sudanese-Victorian criminal involvement has been overstated; that some level of justice over-representation was inevitable due to the demographics of Sudanese-born Victorians, which skew young and male (i.e. the demographic hypothesis); and that offending rates may be associated with heightened law enforcement responses following a high-profile criminal incident in March 2016 that received protracted media coverage and political commentary (i.e. the racial-profiling hypothesis). This paper sought to address these contentions by (i) examining the offending rates of both young and adult males across three cultural sub-groups (i.e. Sudanese-born, Indigenous Australian, Australian-born) across several offending categories between 2015 and 2018 and (ii) exploring the impact of a high-profile criminal incident in March 2016, on the offending rates of Sudanese-born Victorians. Offending rates were calculated using offender incident data from the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency and population estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census data. Findings indicate that Sudanese-born individuals figure prominently in both youth and adult offending categories relative to other major cultural sub-groups. Rates for 'crimes against the person' were especially pronounced for Sudanese-born youth and significantly higher than rates for crimes more subject to police discretion (i.e. public order offences). The 'demographic hypothesis' did not hold for the specified age range of 10 to 17 years. An increase in offending was observed post-March 2016 across two offending categories for Sudanese-born Victorians. Findings are contextualised within.
Among the many peculiarities of early New South Wales was the absence of a police force to manage a population largely composed of convicted criminals. Instead, the early Governors were forced to employ trusted convicts and ex-convicts to act as watchmen and constables and police their fellows. This article explores the history of these neglected convict police in the context of the contemporary development of modern policing in the British world. Using a case-study of a crack-down on illicit distilling under Governor King in 1805–1806, I demonstrate that the convict police were both surprisingly effective and prone to corruption, reflecting the legacy of British policing traditions and the influence of reformist ideas.
The majority of young people in custody have alcohol and other drug problems and over 90% report past-year experiences of high-risk drinking and illicit drug use. Despite a strong link between drug use and violent offending, there is a dearth of information about how this relationship plays out in sentencing young adult offenders. This study examines themes in the sentencing of drug-using young adults facing court for serious violent crime and describes how judges discuss rehabilitation as a consideration for this high-risk group. This research contributes to the literature by bridging law and social science through a cross sectional analysis of n = 507 sentencing remarks from New South Wales higher courts. Substance use involvement was indicated in more than three-quarters (77%) of violent offence cases. Among young adults sentenced for violent crimes involving substance use (n = 51) robbery and homicide were the most common offences, and alcohol and methamphetamine were the most frequently involved substances. Two themes emerged around judges' reasons for sentencing, one emphasising offender agency and choice and another more compassionate position acknowledging the influence of drug dependence on offending behaviour. Despite this divide, addressing substance use dependence was commonly seen as key for the successful rehabilitation of young people who commit violent crime involving alcohol and other drugs.
The overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system has been thoroughly documented over a number of decades. However, studies tend to adopt homogenising discourses that fail to acknowledge or deeply examine the diversity of Indigenous Australian experiences of crime, including across geographic and cultural contexts. This has prompted calls for a more thorough investigation of how experiences of crime differ across Australia’s Indigenous communities, including between remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This paper forms part of a larger study, examining crime and justice in the Torres Strait Region, situated off the far northern tip of the State of Queensland. Here, we examine and compare reported crime trends in the Torres Straits with those in Queensland’s remote Aboriginal communities and Queensland State on the whole. We then draw upon existing anthropological, historical and other literature to explore possible explanations for differences in these crime rates. We find that crime rates are generally lower in the Torres Strait Region and that the different historical experiences of colonisation and policing may provide a partial explanation for this, particularly through the lens of social disorganisation theory.
This essay was completed in early April 2020 and begun during the first week of the official pandemic panic in Canada. The world-wide plague caused by the COVID-19 virus precipitated the first global police event presenting an occasion for researchers and scholars to apply existing theory and empirical understanding to extra-ordinary circumstances. Consideration of the politics of the police during the plague reveals a tectonic shift in the world system. The transnational and comparative study of police and policing reveals the contours of the emerging system of world power all the more clearly in a moment of crisis. The pandemic panic presents an historical moment during which, figuratively speaking, policing power crystalizes and can be seen clearly. On the global stage, in response to the pandemic panic authoritarian and totalitarian policing practices are demonstrated alongside those in putative democracies. Emerging and observable practices of rulebylaw are antithetical to democratic policing in the general social interest, and ruleoflaw rhetoric justifying militarized law enforcement action in many places continues to bring police into further disrepute. The coming era will continue to be a time where, in most places "the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must"-as the ancient historian Thucydides observed in the aftermath of the fratricidal Peloponnesian War more than two millennia ago. The pandemic panic shows in the starkest statistical numbers that, where social justice is achieved, the outcome of the politics of the police is not the command of the sovereign.
‘Newsmaking criminology’, as described by Barak, is the process by which criminologists contribute to the generation of ‘newsworthy’ media content about crime and justice, often through their engagement with broadcast and other news media. While newsmaking criminological practices have been the subject of detailed practitioner testimonials and theoretical treatise, there has been scarce empirical research on newsmaking criminology, particularly in relation to countries outside of the United States and United Kingdom. To illuminate the state of play of newsmaking criminology in Australia and New Zealand, in this paper we analyse findings from 116 survey responses and nine interviews with criminologists working in universities in these two countries, which provide insight into the extent and nature of their news media engagement, and their related perceptions. Our findings indicate that most criminologists working in Australia or New Zealand have made at least one news media appearance in the past two years, and the majority of respondents view news media engagement as a professional ‘duty’. Participants also identified key political, ethical, and logistical issues relevant to their news media engagement, with several expressing a view that radio and television interviewers can influence criminologists to say things that they deem ‘newsworthy’.
For more than 60 years, scholars have often likened chronic and persistent offending to 'living a criminal way of life', yet these evocative motifs have not received much empirical scrutiny. In particular, the so-called criminal life-style is often conceptualized as something the chronic young offender opts into as an alternative to other pro-social pathways. Whereas for older offenders, it is something into which they find themselves trapped and unable to escape. The idea that crime is a chosen 'way of life' among chronic young offenders has not yet received sufficient empirical scrutiny. In this study, we use archival data of nationally representative cohort (n = 373) of young offenders in Australian custodial centers who were each asked whether crime was their 'way of life'. From this, we estimate its prevalence and criminal-career correlates, finding that one in three strongly identify with crime as their way of life. Self-identification is also found to be strongly correlated with Indigenous status even after controlling for different features of the juvenile criminal career. In all, our data paint a vivid portrait of a criminal identity that, for the young offender, likely signals a perceived inevitability that evolves in the context of structurally and culturally conditioned opportunities. Understanding this phenomenon among youthful offenders is important if we are to be successful in our attempts to curtail criminal continuity through desistance informed interventions.
In feminist criminology, there is a growing body of research exploring gendered pathways into prison. However, this research has focussed predominantly on women. There are few gender comparative studies. Further, most feminist pathways research is western centric having, for the most part, been undertaken in the United States. Utilising categorical principal components analysis alongside descriptive statistics and illustrative case study examples, this paper adds to the feminist pathways research by describing and comparing women’s and men’s pathways to prison in Thailand. Three common pathways to prison emerged for both women and men: (1) peer group association/deviant lifestyle, (2) harmed and harming, (3) economically motivated. However, gendered variance was found within these common pathways. Further, two pathways emerged exclusively for women: (1) adulthood victimisation and dysfunctional intimate relationships, (2) naivety and deception. These results substantiate the notion that trajectories into prison are gendered, add empirical support to the feminist pathways perspective beyond the west, contribute to knowledge on how both women and men come to be in prison in Thailand, and in doing so, have utility for the development of gender-informed prison policies, and practices as per the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules).
Advance fee and non-delivery frauds have become very common with the growing preference for online shopping and the new opportunities this brings for online offenders. This article uses unique access to a volunteer group’s database focused on preventing pet scams to explore this type of crime. Distances, among other factors, make the purchase of pets online common in countries such as the USA, Australia and South Africa. This modality of purchase has been exploited by organized criminals largely based in Cameroon to conduct advance fee and non-delivery frauds. The article uses data from the volunteer group Petscams.com to provide unique insights on the techniques of the offenders with particular reference to the strategies used to maximize victimization by using real accounts of victims of such frauds. It also briefly notes how the COVID-19 crisis has been used to adapt this type of scam. The article’s discussion identifies the need for a more nuanced assessment into the role of victim oriented voluntary organizations.
Contact with the police, as the first contact with the criminal justice system for young people and children, may signify individuals who are vulnerable to later adverse social and health outcomes. However, little is known about how often children have contact with police or for what reason. In this paper, we provide a demographic profile of the prevalence and reasons for police contact among a representative, longitudinal, population-based sample of 91,631 young people in New South Wales, Australia. By 13 years of age, almost one in six (15.6%) children had contact with police as a victim, person of interest and/or witness on at least one occasion. The most common reason for contact with police was in relation to an assault. There was considerable overlap among children who had been in contact with police on more than one occasion for different reasons, with those having police contact as a person of interest or witness being seven times more likely to have also been in contact with police as a victim in a separate incident, than children not known to police. We show that contact with the police is surprisingly common among children and suggest that early interventions for children in contact with police might prevent a range of adverse outcomes not limited to criminal offending.
