Category Archives: Our Research

Event: Thirty years after Fitzgerald: The unfinished business of Queensland’s sex work policy

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In July the CJSDRC launched the first of its briefing papers, The Case for Decriminalisation: Sex Work and the Law in QLD’.

This month the paper will be re-launched at Queensland State Parliament,by Centre Director Melissa Bull, at an event sponsored by Peter Russo, State Member for Toohey. If you are interested in reading and hearing more about decriminalisation, join the Respect Inc and #DecrimQLD in Brisbane Parliament House for a solutions-focused Symposium on the unfinished business of the Fitzgerald Inquiry Report. The Fitzgerald Report recommended significant changes to prevent the continued misuse of police powers. Thirty years later sex work remains in the Criminal Code. At this Symposium you will have the opportunity to hear the concerns and solutions from experts in the field of sex work policy. More about the event can be found below.

Thirty years after Fitzgerald: The unfinished business of Queensland’s sex work policy
Sex industry policy in Queensland remains unfinished business. Thirty years after the 1989 Fitzgerald Inquiry found excessive levels of police corruption and misuse of powers over the sex industry, 80% of sex workers in Queensland are still subject to police regulation and monitoring.

In response to the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the Prostitution Act 1999 (Qld) introduced a brothel licensing system but left the Criminal Code 1899 (Qld) intact. The 1999 legislation criminalises sex workers working in pairs and massage parlours, and regulates only 20 brothels. Standard practices such as hiring a receptionist, texting another worker when a client arrives and leaves, are illegal. Police powers include immunity when posing as clients undercover. Police now actively prosecute sex workers for implementing safety strategies, with charges up by 126%, and for incorrect wording in sex work advertising, with charges up 450%. The ‘criminals’ are predominantly women over 30; they are fined up to $6,000. Access to justice is impeded. The unintended consequence of the lack of action on this issue is that basic safety strategies are criminalised. Everyday, sex workers in Queensland must choose between working safely or legally.

The evidence is that decriminalisation is the best model of sex industry regulation. It is a system that would bring all sex industry businesses under Queensland’s existing robust business and industrial regulation. Repealing outdated laws would finish the work of Fitzgerald and provide safer working conditions for sex workers, free from fear of arrest.
This symposium is sponsored by Peter Russo MP, State Member for Toohey.

Photo ID and a ticket are essential for Parliament House events.

Register here

Janelle Fawkes

Panel: Violence in Africa – towards a Southern Criminology

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CJSDRC Member, Professor John Scott was invited to La Trobe University, Department of Social Inquiry on 22 July to head a panel on ŒViolence and Africa: Towards a Southern Criminology¹,

This symposium focused on the on a range of problems relating to violence and Africa, including the African diaspora. While it explored issues of violence in Africa, it also explored the neo-colonial violence against Africa, and the way in which accounts of Africa are often framed with reference to narratives of violence. These issues extend to the African diaspora and ideas of migration that become intertwined with accounts of violence, while violence against refugees and migrants is often erased.
Through these issues, the question of structural violence and its centrality to the articulation of a Southern Criminology that challenges existing global power relations and systems of knowledge is made central in critically rewriting accounts of the Œdark continent¹.

Presenters
John Scott: Towards a Southern Criminology

Anthony Collins: These violent delights have violent ends: the righteous killing of Mlungisi Nxumalo and the interpretation of South Africa violence.

Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi: The Geography of Crime and Violence: Exploring Queerphobic Crime and Violence in Two Southern African Countries

Simóne Plüg: Violence in Campus Protests: Exploring intergenerational trauma and the escalation of conflicts.

Crispin Hemson: Young South African men confronting violence Akuch Kuol Anyieth: Masculinity and the Negotiation of Domestic Violence in the Melbourne¹s South Sudanese Australian community

Kim Lah: The Congo, an ŒExemplary¹ Australian, and the Massacre of Civilians in Kilwa: A Case Study of Capitalism, Structural Violence, and the Banality of Evil.

 

 

Domestic violence and technology: Findings and future pathways

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Associate Professor Molly Dragiewicz and Dr Bridget Harris will present findings from the ACCAN funded study Domestic violence and communication technology: Victim experiences of intrusion, surveillance, and identity theft. This free public seminar will present key findings from the report on survivor experiences of technology-facilitated coercive control.

26 June, 2019
4:00 pm-5:30 pm
Room P419, Level 4, P Block, Gardens Point Campus

Download the report and infographics here

Information about the research team, future presentations, and publications is here.

Ask LOIS webinar on Domestic violence and communication technology

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Associate Professor Molly Dragiewicz and Dr Bridget Harris will present an Ask LOIS webinar on Domestic violence and communication technology
20 June, 2019
11:00 am-11:30 am
Register here https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/974592111259198209

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Domestic violence and communication technology: Insights from Australian survivors

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Associate Professor Molly Dragiewicz will present Domestic violence and communication technology: Insights from Australian survivors at the Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month Breakfast hosted by Cairns Regional Domestic Violence Service in Cairns, Australia. This is the first presentation of the findings from the ACCAN funded study Domestic violence and communication technology: Victim experiences of intrusion, surveillance, and identity theft.

Read more

Australia Brazil exchange on preventing family violence

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The Australian Embassy in Brazil is funding an exchange of family violence experts.

The first phase of the project, taking place in June 2019, involves five leading gender and family violence prevention scholars traveling to Brazil to engage in a program of visits to family violence and criminal justice agencies. The  Australian experts will also partake in a series of academic and public forums and presentations with Brazilian experts.

The second phase of the exchange will involve more than a dozen Brazilian expert practitioners and academics traveling to Australia to engage in a similar program of activities. One of the Victorian Andrews government’s defining policy contributions and investments ($2.7 b) has been towards ending family violence.

In the wake of the landmark Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (2016), Australia is a world leader in preventing family violence. A

The Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre is a key partner and participant in the exchange. The Australian experts attending the Brazilian exchange also include Professor Kerry Carrington from QUT School of Justice who has been researching the prevention of gender violence and women’s police stations in Argentina – https://research.qut.edu.au/pgv/

The five leading gender and family violence prevention scholars traveling to Brazil in June include, (pictured below from L to R)

Professor Kerry Carrington (QUT), Dr Lisa Harris (RMIT),
Professor Jude McCulloch (Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre),
Dr Jasmine McGowan (Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre), Dr Heather Nancorrow (CEO, ANROWS)

 

 

Media: Women’s Only Police Stations

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QUT Media have issued a press release following a Channel 7 News report on Friday 3 May 2019 about QUT School of Justice Head of School Professor Kerry Carrington’s research into women’s only police stations in Argentina and their applicability to Australia.

Kerry has recently returned from the UN 63rd Commission on the Status of Women NGO Sessions in New York where she addressed the meeting of 80-100 NGO delegates from around the world on her extensive research on women’s police stations in Argentina and others’ research from Brazil and other South American countries.

Professor Carrington called on other UN members to recognise the women’s police stations’ success in preventing gender violence, and promote the establishment of stand-alone women’s police stations to eliminate violence against women.

See the media release here:  https://www.qut.edu.au/news?id=143668

And watch the 7News report here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=357336771580330

 

New Publication: Criminologies of the Global South

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‘

‘Criminologies of the Global South’ authored by six scholars from across four continents and six countries, namely:

Kerry Carrington, Bill Dixon, David Fonseca, David Rodríguez Goyes. Jianhong Liu and Diego Zysman, has been published in Critical Criminology (2019) DOI 10.1007/s10612-019-09450-y

Abstract:
This article attempts an ambitious undertaking by scholars collaborating from far flung parts of the globe to redefine the geographic and conceptual limits of critical criminology. We attempt to scope, albeit briefly, the various contributions to criminology (not all of it critical) from Argentina, Asia, Brazil, Colombia, and South Africa. Our aim is not to criticize the significant contributions to critical criminology by scholars from the Global North, but to southernize critical criminology—to extend its gaze and horizons beyond the North Atlantic world. The decolonization, democratization and globalization of knowledge is a profoundly important project in an unequal and divided world where knowledge systems have been dominated by Anglophone countries of the Global North (Ball 2019; Connell 2007). Southernizing fields of knowledge represents an important step in the journey toward cognitive justice as imagined by de Sousa Santos (2014). While we can make only a very small contribution from a selected number of countries from the Global South, it is our hope that others may be inspired to join the journey, fill in the gaps, and bridge global divides.

The article is available as ‘Online First’:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10612-019-09450-y
through Springer Link. If you have difficulty accessing please email Kerry.carrington@qut.edu.au 

The Australian Law Reform Commission Report on the Family Law System: Implications for Domestic Violence

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The Australian Law Reform Commission Report on the Family Law System: Implications for Domestic Violence

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) Review of the Family Law System is the first comprehensive review of Australia’s family law system since its commencement more than 40 years ago.The ALRC Report on the Review of the Family Law System findings and recommendations have serious implications for domestic violence, and women and children will be deeply affected by how they are implemented. Please join us for an interactive discussion and networking luncheon to consider the report and recommendations for domestic violence cases as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

This is a partnership event between Brisbane Domestic Violence Service and QUT Law. Read more

Report of Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement (PJCLE) Inquiry into the Impact of New and Emerging Information and Communication Technology

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Dr Monique Mann

Crime Justice and Social Democracy Research Centre member Dr Monique Mann, along with colleagues from Deakin University (Dr Ian Warren and Dr Adam Molnar) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Dr Angela Daly) have been extensively cited in the final report of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement (PJCLE) Inquiry into the Impact of New and Emerging Information and Communication Technology.

Their joint programme of research in surveillance and cybercrime (including transnational online policing, darkweb policing, Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, big data policing, encryption policy, biometrics, and 3D printed firearms) was cited twenty-nine times in the report.

Their research is highly critical of the human rights implications of new technologies in policing, and it clearly shaped the report, directly influencing the recommendations handed down by the PCJLE, which can be found here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/publications/tabledpapers/02593c55-f6db-4432-85c7-e0ba89b0e21b/upload_pdf/PJCLE_Impact%20of%20emerging%20info%20and%20comms%20tech_April%202019.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22publications/tabledpapers

Drs Mann and Molnar appeared before the committee to give oral evidence in March 2018, and their opening statement to the Parliamentary Joint Committee can be found here: https://privacy.org.au/2018/03/30/statement-to-the-parliamentary-joint-committee-on-law-enforcement/

Their original full submission provided to the Inquiry, representing all digital rights civil society organisations in Australia, can be found here: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/116090/