Special Issue: International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy

Posted by Brigid on 1 March, 2020

Ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8 2020 – a special issue of International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy.

The first issue for 2020 of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy is now available. This special issue titled ‘The Social Protection of Women and Girls: Links to Crime and Justice at CSW63’ contains a selection of articles from presentations at a series of parallel and side events held at the Commission on the Status of Women’s 63rd session (CSW63) at the UN Headquarters in New York City, US (March 2019). Guest editors Dr Sheetal Ranjan, Dr Rosemary Barberet, Dr Dawn Beichner and Dr Elaine Arnull have compiled an impressive array of articles from six panel events focusing on women, crime and justice.

Included in this issue are considerations related to gendered violence. Lori K. Sudderth’s paper represents the depth of developing practice in this area to ‘de-normalise’ violence within the family and the difficulties of undertaking this work, which include a lack of funding and the vulnerabilities of those taking part. Amelia Roskin-Frazee, examines higher education institutions’ efforts to address sexual violence that is perpetrated against women with marginalised identities. Roskin-Frazee gathered and analysed student sexual violence policies at 80 higher education institutions in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US. Not surprisingly, she found that these policies failed to account for how race, sexuality, class and disability shape women’s experiences of sexual violence. Kerry Carrington, Natacha Guala, María Victoria Puyol and Máximo Sozzo examine how women’s police stations empower women, widen access to justice and prevent gender violence by turning around the patriarchal norms that sustain it. Cassia Spohn, in her paper, asks why the criminal justice system’s response to the crime of rape has not improved significantly in the past half century.

Policing and incarceration is the focus of several papers: Pilar Larroulet, Catalina Droppelmann, Paloma Del Villar, Sebastian Daza and Ana Figueroa explore ‘Who is transitioning out of prison? Characterizing female offenders and their needs in Chile’. Judith Ryder discusses the ways in which education can be a gateway to social and economic mobility for incarcerated women. Andrea Leverentz, urges readers to consider the unique ways in which women’s role as primary care provider differentially affects their pathways home from prison and the disruption posed by their incarceration on their children’s lives.

This special issue will be of particular relevance to two events taking place in 2020: the 14th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, to be held in Kyoto, Japan on 20–27 April, and the CSW’s 64th session, to be held in March 2020 in New York City.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the main intergovernmental body exclusively concerned with gender equality and the empowerment of women. Established in 1946, the CSW is a functional commission of the Economic and Social Council of the UN. The commission is instrumental in promoting women’s rights, documenting the global reality of women’s lives and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women

Any questions or feedback on the Journal can be sent to Tracy Creagh, Journal Manager – crimjournal@qut.edu.au

Call for Abstracts: Beyond Cybercrime – New perspectives on crime, harm and digital technologies

Posted by Brigid on 13 February, 2020

An International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy special issue

Guest editors: Faith Gordon, Alyce McGovern, Chrissy Thompson, Mark A Wood

Abstract submission deadline: 30/04/2020

The last decade has seen the emergence of scholarship examining the nexus between crime, justice and digital technologies through a distinctly critical criminological lens. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the nexus between crime, digital technologies, and justice, such digital criminological scholarship encompasses and extends the remit of traditional ‘cyber’ and computer crime research. In doing so, it also attempts to rethink how digital technologies are conceptualised and accounted for in criminological research, moving beyond notions of cyberspace and online/offline dichotomies to account for the increasingly ‘onlife’ way technologies change how crime is perceived, perpetrated, and responded to.

This special issue seeks to further expand digital criminological scholarship through critically examining how digital technologies are conceptualised within research into crime and justice. In doing so, the editors welcome contributions that bring criminology into conversation with fields such as digital sociology, human-computer interaction, media studies, science and technology studies, software studies, and the philosophy of technology. The editors invite articles that take an interdisciplinary approach to rethinking the crime-technology nexus in research concerning issues including, but not limited to:

Computer-facilitated crime
Surveillance, sousveillance, and counter-surveillance
Digilantism, informal justice and social media activism
Big Data, preventive policing, and criminal justice
Crime prevention
Public criminology
Crime causation theory
State and corporate crime
Global crime

Submissions: submitted abstracts should be no longer than 300-words. If you are interested in contributing to this special issue, please send your abstract to guest editor Mark A Wood (mark.wood@deakin.edu.au).

Following review of abstracts, authors will be notified June 30, 2020 of whether a full paper will be invited for submission. Accepted authors will have until December 30, 2020 to submit their articles to the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy.

Length and other formatting issues for accepted papers will follow normal International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy guidelines, which can be accessed at: https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.

Book reviews: the editors also welcome book reviews and book review symposia on contemporary texts that examine the nexus between crime, justice and digital technologies, as well as reviews of texts from beyond criminology that might inform studies of this nexus. If you are interested in contributing a book review or book review symposium, please contact guest editor Faith Gordon (Faith.Gordon@monash.edu).

About the journal: The International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy is an open access, SCImago Q2 ranked (Journal H Index = 11), blind peer-reviewed journal that publishes critical research about challenges confronting criminal justice systems around the world.

More information on the journal can be found at: https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/about

Bridget Harris: ANZSOC New Scholar Prize 2019

Posted by Brigid on 12 December, 2019

Congratulations to QUT C4J member, Dr Bridget Harris, on her recent award of ANZSOC New Scholar Prize for 2019. The New Scholar Prize is given each year for the best publication in criminology (or a related area) written by a member of the Society who qualifies as an early career researcher.

The article, co-authored with Delanie Woodlock , was published in British Journal of Criminology and is titled, “Digital Coercive Control: Insights From Two Landmark Domestic Violence Studies”. The authors present their recent studies on harmful and invasive behaviours enacted through technology. Bridget applies her research focus of domestic and family violence (DFV) and spatiality, and the unique ‘spaceless’ features of technology-facilitated DFV.

The full article is available through open access and can be found here.

Congratulations to Bridget on a very successful year pioneering and further developing research into this very important area, both in Australia and internationally. A well deserved award.

Inaugural issue: Law, Technology and Humans

Posted by Brigid on 5 December, 2019

The inaugural issue of Law, Technology and Humans is now online.

Law, Technology and Humans is an international, open access, peer-reviewed journal publishing original, innovative research concerned with the human and humanity of law and technology.

In his introduction to the new publication, General Editor Professor Kieran Tranter notes:

Law, Technology and Humans aims for something different from the mainstream of technology law scholarship. Rather than repeating analysis born from the dominant narrative, it boldly presents itself as a portal to the multiverse of stories and methods through which to understand, dream, critique, build and live well in the technological present as it, with every planetary rotation, moves towards the technological future.

The foundation issue is in two parts. The first is a collection of papers aligned to the recent symposium: Automation and Disruption in the Legal Profession and includes articles related to the future of the legal profession, a new curriculum approach to learning within the legal academy, interpretations of NewLaw practice in Australia, the utilisation of technologies in the community legal sector and experiential ethics for the lawyer/AI hybrid.

The second part of this issue is dedicated to general articles examining law and technology on a broader scale including the use of robo-advisors in the financial services market and the legal consequences of social media use by employees. The Journal also includes a review of Virginia Eubanks recent book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by journal book review editor Faith Gordon.

Submissions are now being accepted for Volume 2, Issue 1 to be published in May 2020

Follow Journal announcements on Twitter @LawTechHum

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy – Volume 8 Issue 4 2019

Posted by Brigid on 2 December, 2019

A new issue of International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy is now available. This final issue for 2019 features a variety of topics and authors from Mexico, US, Australia, Turkey, Zimbabwe and Thailand.

Included in the issue is a mixed-methods study examining how criminologists in Australia and New Zealand have employed social media to engage in public criminology. Mark Wood, Imogen Richards, Mary Iliadis and Michael McDermott (from the University of Melbourne and Deakin University, Australia) note that social media has and continues to change the terrain for researchers facilitating new forms of news making within the discipline of criminology. Women’s prison reform is explored in North-Eastern Thailand with an application to international human rights standards. With one of the highest incarceration rates of women in the world, practitioners from Mahidol University, Thailand discuss the implementation of ‘Bangkok Rules’ finding that despite extensive reforms areas for improvement remain.

Policing and organised crime are the topics of four articles: The Colombian National Police and the Politics of Crime Control Evaluations, Kenneth Sebastian León; Community Policing and Crime Prevention: Evaluating the Role of Traditional Leaders under Chief Madliwa in Nkayi District, Zimbabwe, Whitehead Zikhali; Police Officers’ Fear of Crime: An Analysis of Interviews with Officers in Trinidad and Tobago, Lee Michael Johnson, Danielle Watson and Nathan Pino, and; Local Elections and Organised Crime: The Case of Michoacán, Mexico, Jerjes Aguirre Ochoa, Hugo Amador Herrera Torres.

Another highlight of the issue is Sandra Walklate and Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s examination of coercive control within the legal context. Intimate partner violence has long been seen through the lens of coercive control and the authors suggest that the criminalisation of coercive control only serves to fail those it is intended to protect.

Any enquiries regarding the Journal should be forwarded to Tracy Creagh, Journal Manager – crimjournal@qut.edu.au

Publication: Centre for Justice Research Report Series, Vol1/2019

Posted by Brigid on 8 November, 2019

QUT Centre for Justice launched its first edition of the Centre for Justice Research Report Series. This series will publish reports up to 6 times a year on current research relating to crime and justice.

This first edition outlines the findings of the ARC-funded research of Professor Kerry Carrington and her multi-country team of researchers into how women’s police stations in Argentina have helped to prevent domestic family violence

Read the full Research Report titled, “The Role of Women’s Police Stations in Responding to and Preventing Gender Violence: Buenos Aires, Argentina: Final Report of Field Research” here.

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy ranks 14th

Posted by Brigid on 29 October, 2019

Last week was International Open Access Week 2019 (October 21-27). As an open access publication the Journal is committed to democratising quality knowledge production and the dissemination of criminological research. The Journal’s achievements in open access are reflected in the latest Scimago journal rankings. Of the top 50 open access law journals ranked internationally, the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy ranks 14th. The Journal is ranked as the top open access law journal in the Pacific Region. The Scimago Journal and Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). Citation data is drawn from over 34,100 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers and country performance metrics from 239 countries worldwide.

Alignment to open access practices in academic publishing has not been an arbitrary consideration and compliments emerging global practices and trends in academic publishing. Open scholarship and open access publishing maximises the sharing of knowledge. For the author the benefits of publishing in open access include: increased citation and impact; improved visibility in terms of public engagement and interest, and; the reduction of prohibitive publishing barriers related to costs. Universities benefit from wider dissemination of research and by access to a wider range of educational resources.

Achieving best practice in open access is a cumulative result of the Journal’s ongoing support from QUT Library, the QUT Faculty of Law, QUT’s Centre for Justice and the sustained attention to good practice from the editorial team, authors, reviewers and the the International Editorial Board

Special Issue – International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy

Posted by Brigid on 1 September, 2019

A new issue of International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy is now available. This special issue Towards Global Green Criminological Dialogues: Voices from the Americas and Europe is a timely publication which strives to present diverse voices to support the goal of Southern criminology to level inequalities in the valuing of criminological knowledge in the Global North and the Global South. Guest editors David Rodríguez Goyes, Ragnhild Sollund and Nigel South present six articles and three book reviews (most co-written by Latin American and ‘Northern’ authors) with an aim to “create ‘Global Green Criminological Dialogues’ rather than just reproduce ‘voices from Latin America’ “.

Highlights include Yaneth Katia Apaza Huanca’s interpretation of Pachamama (sacred Mother Earth) in Non-Western Epistemology and the Understanding of the Pachamama (Environment) Within the World(s) of the Aymara Identity; and Ragnhild Sollund, Ángela Maldonado and Claudia Brieva Rico’s analysis of the global measures applied to counteract climate change, and the effects these measures have on local peripheral communities in The Norway–Colombia Agreement to Protect Rainforest and Reduce Global Warming: Success or Failure? In the article Between ‘Conservation’ and ‘Development’: The Construction of ‘Protected Nature’ and the Environmental Disenfranchisement of Indigenous Communities, David R. Goyes and Nigel South discuss hidden intentions behind conservation projects, arguing that development projects and conservation projects often share the effect of environmentally disenfranchising Indigenous communities.

Any enquiries regarding the Journal should be forwarded to Tracy Creagh, Journal Manager – t.creagh@qut.edu.au