Category Archives: Journal articles

Essay-“Ordinary People”-Dr Dean Biron

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School of Justice affiliated academic Dr Dean Biron has published an essay titled “Ordinary People,” which appears in the Autumn 2019 edition of Meanjin Quarterly.

“Ordinary People” is a quasi-memoir piece reflecting upon the author’s experience of dealing with historical sexual abuse investigations while working as a detective in the Queensland Police Service between 1998 and 2004. The essay considers the impediments to justice faced by abuse victims and concludes by suggesting that their extraordinary courage can help provide a paradigm for broader social reform in Australia.

Dean’s previous writing has appeared in such publications as Child Abuse & Neglect, The Journal of Family Violence, Overland, Children Australia, Metro Magazine, Thesis Eleven, Rock Music Studies and Portal: the Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies. His contribution to Meanjin’s “What I’m Reading” blog series will appear in April.

Dean is currently teaching in QUT Justice undergraduate subjects ‘Deviance’ and ‘Policing in Context’.  A full copy of the essay can be found here – https://meanjin.com.au/current-edition/

Recently published: Technology facilitated coercive control: Domestic violence and the competing roles of digital media platforms

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Molly Dragiewicz, Jean Burgess, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Michael Salter, Nicolas P. Suzor, Delanie Woodlock & Bridget Harris recently published Technology facilitated coercive control: Domestic violence and the competing roles of digital media platforms. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 609–625. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447341

This article is part of a special issue of Feminist Media Studies on Online Misogyny, edited by Debbie Ging and Eugenia Siapera. Read more

Publication: ‘A lightbulb moment’: Using the theory of planned behaviour to explore the challenges and opportunities for early engagement of Australian men who use violence in their relationships

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CJRC member, Dr. Michael Flood has recently published an article in Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

 Forsdike, K., Tarzia, L., Flood, M., Vlais, R., and Hegarty, K. “‘A lightbulb moment’: Using the theory of planned behaviour to explore the challenges and opportunities for early engagement of Australian men who use violence in their relationships.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (2018). DOI: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260518780778

 Abstract: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a common complex social and public health problem. Interventions for IPV male perpetrators are an essential component of an early and effective response. Yet little is known about how to engage men in interventions for help-seeking. Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we explored men’s perceptions of seeking help for an unhealthy relationship and how they could be supported to recognize their behavior and undertake change at an early stage. We recruited 23 men who were currently attending a men’s behavior change program in Australia to take part in focus groups. These were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. The TPB concepts of behavioral beliefs, perceived control, and subjective norms were found throughout the data. Behavioral beliefs covered four subthemes: self-awareness, self-reflection and agency, the influence of others to change, and needing the right message in the right place. Perceived control was connected to these men’s understandings of what it means to be a man. Subjective norms were rarely raised, but there was some indication that men’s perceptions of societal norms about men as violent influenced a perceived lack of agency to change behavior. Our findings highlight the complexity of, and challenges in, engaging men who may use violence before they reach crisis point and justice intervenes. Despite this, participating men could find acceptable an appropriately developed and easy-to-access intervention that enhances recognition of behaviors and provides links to supports. Health professionals or researchers developing early interventions targeting these men need to take the engagement challenges into account.

 

Publication: (Mis)Understanding the Impact of Online Fraud: Implications for Victim Assistance Schemes

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Crime and Justice Research Centre member Dr Cassandra Cross has published a new article in the journal Victims and Offenders, which argues for reform of victim assistance schemes across Australia.

(Mis)Understanding the Impact of Online Fraud: Implications for Victim Assistance Schemes

Australia provides victims of violent crime access to financial support to assist with recovery, excluding victims of nonviolent offences. The author examines the experiences of online fraud victims, and details how the impacts experienced extend beyond financial losses, to include deterioration in health and well-being, relationship breakdown, homelessness, and unemployment, and in the worst cases, suicidal ideation. Using online fraud as a case study, the author argues eligibility to access victim assistance schemes should consider harms suffered rather than the offence experienced. Consequently, the author advocates a shift in eligibility criteria of victim assistance schemes to facilitate much-needed support to online fraud victims.

The full article can be accessed here.

Publication: The limits of (digital) constitutionalism: Exploring the privacy-security (im)balance in Australia

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Crime and Justice Research Centre members Dr Monique Mann and Dr Angela Daly, along with Justice PhD Candidate Michael Wilson, and QUT Law Associate Professor Nic Suzor recently published ‘The limits of (digital) constitutionalism: Exploring the privacy-security (im)balance in Australia’ in the International Communication Gazette.

 Abstract

This article explores the challenges of digital constitutionalism in practice through a case study examining how concepts of privacy and security have been framed and contested in Australian cyber security and telecommunications policy-making over the last decade. The Australian Government has formally committed to ‘internet freedom’ norms, including privacy, through membership of the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC). Importantly, however, this commitment is non-binding and designed primarily to guide the development of policy by legislators and the executive government. Through this analysis, we seek to understand if, and how, principles of digital constitutionalism have been incorporated at the national level. Our analysis suggests a fundamental challenge for the project of digital constitutionalism in developing and implementing principles that have practical or legally binding impact on domestic telecommunications and cyber security policy. Australia is the only major Western liberal democracy without comprehensive constitutional human rights or a legislated bill of rights at the federal level; this means that the task of ‘balancing’ what are conceived as competing rights is left only to the legislature. Our analysis shows that despite high-level commitments to privacy as per the Freedom Online Coalition, individual rights are routinely discounted against collective rights to security. We conclude by arguing that, at least in Australia, the domestic conditions limit the practical application and enforcement of digital constitutionalism’s norms.

Keywords

Cyber security, digital constitutionalism, human rights, metadata retention, online surveillance, privacy, security, securitization

You can read the full article here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1748048518757141?journalCode=gazb#articleShareContainer

 

 

New Publication – Understanding Romance Fraud: Insights from Domestic Violence Literature

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 Cassandra Cross, Molly Dragiewicz and Kelly Richards have recently had an article published in the British Journal of Criminology. The article is the first to examine romance fraud from within the framework of psychological abuse, as established in domestic violence research.

 Abstract

Romance fraud affects thousands of victims globally, yet few scholars have studied it. The dynamics of relationships between victims and offenders are not well understood, and the effects are rarely discussed. This article adapts the concept of psychological abuse from studies of domestic violence to better understand romance fraud. Using interviews with 21 Australian romance fraud victims, we show how offenders use non-violent tactics to ensure compliance with ongoing demands for money. This article identifies similarities and differences between domestic violence and romance fraud. We argue that thinking through domestic violence and romance fraud together offers potential benefits to both bodies of research.

 The full article can be found here

 

 

Publication: The legal geographies of transnational cyber-prosecutions: Extradition, human rights and forum shifting

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Crime and Justice Research Centre member Dr Monique Mann, along with Deakin University colleagues Dr Ian Warren and Ms Sally Kennedy, recently published ‘The legal geographies of transnational cyber-prosecutions: Extradition, human rights and forum shifting’ in the leading international (Q1) journal Global Crime.

The article describes legal and human rights issues in three cases of transnational online offending involving extradition requests by the United States (US). These cases were selected as all suspects claimed the negative impacts of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were sufficient to deny extradition on human rights grounds. The authors demonstrate how recent developments in UK and Irish extradition law raise human rights and prosecutorial challenges specific to online offending that are not met by established protections under domestic and internationally sanctioned approaches to extradition, or human rights, law. In these cases, although the allegedly unlawful conduct occurred exclusively online and concurrent jurisdiction enables prosecution at both the source and location of harm, the authors demonstrate why national courts hearing extradition challenges are extremely reluctant to shift the trial forum. They conclude by discussing the implications of the new geographies of online offending for future criminological research and transnational criminal justice.

Keywords: Extradition, computer hacking, legal geography, human rights, autism spectrum disorders, Asperger’s syndrome.

The article can be accessed at this link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17440572.2018.1448272?journalCode=fglc20&

Publication: Gender and Age in the Construction of Male Youth in the European Migration “Crisis”

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The following article was recently published by Dr. Helen Berents from QUT School of Justice and member of CJRC, along with colleagues from Monash University and Salvation Army UK.  This article was published in Signs – a leading journal (Q1) for feminist politics.

Abstract:

Displacement is clearly gendered; age also has a strong influence on outcomes and experiences for the displaced, including a significant impact on how they are understood by the public and policy makers. It is important to keep this in mind when considering how children and youth are understood within contexts of conflict and insecurity, how they are affected by these forces, and how they navigate their lives in these contexts, especially in seeking peaceful outcomes. Here we engage with the current so-called European migration crisis as a potential watershed moment in understandings of children and youth as refugees. In particular, we suggest that the public representations of young people in this context can be deeply influenced by stereotypes and assumptions around gender and age that may—intentionally or inadvertently—lead to greater insecurity for people of diverse genders and ages. Likewise, we argue that when considering scholarship, policy, and practice in relation to migration, it is critical to develop and apply a lens that accounts for both gender and age.

A link to the full article can be found here

 

Media discourse surrounding ‘non-ideal’ victims – The Ashley Madison data breach case

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Media discourses surrounding ‘non-ideal’ victims

The case of the Ashley Madison data breach

Cassandra Cross, Megan Parker and Daniel Sansom

Abstract

Data breaches are an increasingly common event across businesses globally. Many companies have been subject to large-scale breaches. Consequently, the exposure of 37 million customers of the Ashley Madison website is not an extraordinary event in and of itself. However, Ashley Madison is an online dating website predominantly known for facilitating extramarital affairs. Therefore, the nature of this website (and business) is very different from those that have previously been breached. This article examines one of the media discourses surrounding the victims of the Ashley Madison data breach. It particular, it illustrates examples of victim blaming evident in the print media towards individuals (or customers) who had their personal details exposed. Importantly, it highlights the emerging tension within this particular case, of the strong victim blaming narrative contrasted against those who attempted to challenge this discourse and refocus attention on the actual offenders, and the criminality of the act. The article concludes that victims of this data breach were exposed to victim blaming, based on the perceived immorality of the website they were connected to and their actions in subscribing, rather than focusing on the data breach itself, and the blatant criminality of the offenders who exposed the sensitive information.

Available online at the International Review of Victimology

 

 

Publication: “Sleeping the deep, deep sleep – the Hierarchy of Disaster” – Dr. Dean Biron

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School of Justice affiliated academic Dr Dean Biron has published a new essay titled “Sleeping the deep, deep sleep.” Co-written with Dr Suzie Gibson of Charles Sturt University, the piece appears in Issue 229 of Overland Literary Journal:

https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-229/essay-dean-biron-and-suzie-gibson/

Subtitled “The Hierarchy of Disaster,” the essay considers how human-made catastrophes are ordered so as to distinguish between worthy and unworthy victims. Commencing with a comparison of political and media responses to the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US and the 1984 Bhopal tragedy in India, the essay considers how many traumatic occurrences are elided from the collective memory and justice is denied to those victims of disasters which occur beyond the “self-reverent gaze” of Western society. It concludes by suggesting that the starting point to diminishing this hierarchy, and in turn confronting the ubiquity of disaster itself, must be an ethical recalibration on the part of first world governments.

In recent months Dean has also published work in The Guardian, The Conversation, Popular Music and Society and Metro Screen Journal.

Dean is currently coordinating the QUT Justice undergraduate subject ‘Deviance.’