Vice-Chancellors’s Award for Excellence – Dr Cassandra Cross

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Congratulations to Dr Cassandra Cross, member of QUT Centre for Justice, on her recent Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence.  This award is conferred to individuals or teams in recognition of exceptional performance that aligns with the university’s vision and strategic goals.

Cass’ award was based on excellence in Partnerships and Engagement for forging transdisciplinary research partnerships and enhancing engagement within and beyond the QUT community.

Cass has built strong partnerships and engagement in the areas of fraud and cybercrime with SUNCORP, several Australian Police agencies, PCYC Queensland, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and Self-Managed Independent Superannuation Funds Association (SISFA)

Congratulations Cass.

 

 

Workshop: Youth and Peace in the Indo-Pacific: Policy, Practice, Action

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Public Panel – 27 November                     Workshop day 2

Helen Berents – Workshop Welcome

On the 28th and 29th of November, QUT Centre for Justice hosted a workshop funded by the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA), ‘Youth and Peace in the Indo-Pacific: Policy, Practice, Action’.

The workshop was co-convened by School of Justice Senior Lecturer, Dr Helen Berents, along with Dr Caitlin Mollica (Griffith University) and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia Professor Jacqui True (Monash University).

On Wednesday 27, November there was a public evening panel event including Dr Helen Berents, on ‘Agents of Change: What Can Youth Offer Peace and Security?’ held at the Ship Inn, Southbank.

The workshop on the 28th and 29th brought together invited academics, advocates, and civil society representatives from across Australia to consider how policy responses and scholarship can better engage with the peace and security challenges facing young people in the Indo-Pacific region.

Over half the world’s population is under 30 years old; and almost half of the world’s youth live in the Indo-Pacific. Young people in the region face multiple, intersecting challenges including the impact of conflict and insecurity, economic insecurity, and growing environmental risks. Yet they are often marginalised or excluded from the institutions tasked with implementing peace and security. This workshop aimed to facilitate a critical policy dialogue, which examines post-conflict practices that have sought to meaningfully engage with the experiences of youth in the region.

 The workshop drew on the established work and leadership of feminist scholars and practitioners, which has brought about gender inclusive policy making, and encouraged the development of similar practices for those individuals aged between 18-29 years old. In doing so, it contributed critical scholarship that considers the contributions of youth participation to the creation of more inclusive and holistic peace practices; and Australia’s role in the development of youth mainstreaming policies and practices in conflict-affected contexts.

Further information about the workshop can be found here.

 

 

 

The Final Report of ARC Field Research on Women’s Police Stations, Buenos Aires, Argentina is now published in English and Spanish

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The Final Report of ARC Field Research on Women’s Police Stations, Buenos Aires, Argentina is now published in English and Spanish, and free to download from the project page

Summary of the Report
Women’s Police Stations are unique innovations that emerged from nations of the Global South in the second half of the 20th century to address violence against women. This report presents the results of a world first study of the unique way these stations called Comisaría de la Mujer (CMF) prevent gender-based violence in the Province of Buenos Aires Argentina. In Spanish and Portuguese these stations are called Police Stations for Women, for the sake of ease in this article we call them Women’s Police Stations. Little is currently known about how this distinctive multi-disciplinary model of policing (that includes social workers, lawyers, psychologists and police) prevents gender violence.
First, we outline the background to the emergence of Women’s Police Stations in the societies of the Global South designed explicitly to respond to and prevent gender-based violence. These stations are distinguished from the women only police units that existed in most parts of the Global North that restricted women in law enforcement to caring for women and children in custody (Cartron 2015, 9). The main substance of the report presents the results of our empirical study on the role of Women’s Police Stations in responding to and preventing gender violence in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The province established its first women’s police station in 1988 and now has 128. They account for one in five of all police stations in the province and since 2009 have had a legislated mandate to prevent gender violence which distinguishes them from other Women’s Police Stations. We interviewed 100 employees from ten of these unique multi-disciplinary stations.
The final section critically reflects on the virtues and limits of Women’s Police Stations as a model for addressing and preventing gender-based violence. The report compares traditional policing versus specialist policing approaches to the prevention of gender-based violence. While not without limitations, we conclude that specialised Women’s Police Stations in the societies of the Global South widen access to justice, empower women to break the cycle of domestic violence, and engage in a form of community policing that challenges the social norms that sustain gender violence. As a by-product they also provide a career in law enforcement for police (male and female) who specialise in responding to gender violence. The study is framed by Southern Criminology which reverses the notion that ideas, policies and theories can only travel from the Global North to the Global South. The study is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and includes a multi-country team of researchers whose contributions we gratefully acknowledge.

Citation

English

Carrington, K. Sozzo, M. Puyol, M. V. Gamboa, M. Guala, N. Ghiberto, L. Zysman, D. (2019) The Role of Women’s Police Stations in Responding to and Preventing Gender Violence: Buenos Aires, Argentina: Final Report of Field Research. QUT Centre for Justice: Brisbane. Research Report Series 1.

Spanish
Carrington, Kerry , Sozzo, Maximo , Puyol, Maria Victoria , Gamboa, Marcela , Guala, Natacha , Ghiberto, Luciana , & Zysman, Diego (2019) El rol de las Comisarías de la Mujer en la prevención y el abordaje de la violencia de género, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Informe final de trabajo de campo. QUT Centre for Justice: Brisbane. Research Report Series 1.

For more information about the ARC project click here

Bridget Harris: ANZSOC New Scholar Prize 2019

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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.

 

 

2nd International Congress on Southern Criminology: Conflict, Power and Justice, Bogotá, Colombia

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QUT Centre for Justice co-hosted the 2nd International Congress on Southern Criminology: Conflict, Power and Justice, Bogotá, Colombia, November 6-9 2019.

The event was attended by around 150 delegates from around the world. The majority of participants came from across Latin America, but also participants from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, University of Essex, University of Northumbria and University of Leicester, UK;  the University of Oslo, Norway and of course QUT Centre for Justice.

Papers were grouped into the following themes: Indigenous Knowledges and Southern Criminology; Gender Violence and Southern Criminology; Punishment and Southern Criminology and Eco-Crimes and Southern Criminology.

Academic knowledge about conflict, power and justice has traditionally come from a select number of countries belonging to the Global North; whose magazines, conferences, editors and universities exercise dominion over the global intellectual landscape. In recent decades, substantial efforts have been made to mitigate these colonized ways of generating new knowledge in the area. This three-day congress held in Colombia sought to contribute to the task of democratizing and building a knowledge of the South.

The first International congress on southern criminology, took place in November 2018 at the National University of the Litoral (Argentina). This second congress was co-hosted jointly between it and the Queensland University of Technology, Australia; the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); the Catholic University of Colombia; the University of Essex (United Kingdom); the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina); the University of Northumbria (United Kingdom) and the University of Oslo (Norway).

The event had simultaneous translations. Selected articles will be published in a special edition of the journal Critical Criminology. 

Inaugural issue: Law, Technology and Humans

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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

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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

Centre for Justice DECRA success 2020

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Congratulations to Centre for Justice members, Dr Bridget Harris and Dr Helen Berents who have both been awarded a DECRA to commence in 2020. This is an outstanding result, not just for QUT and for the Faculty but for both of these exceptional researchers.

The DECRA success rate for 2020 was 16% nationwide. Across Australia just only 21 grants were allocated to the FoR code 16 (Studies in Human Society). These were the only HASS DECRAs awarded to QUT this year which again speaks to the calibre and standing of the researchers and their projects.

Bridget’s project is titled: Building State responses to technology-facilitated domestic violence
This project aims to investigate one of Australia’s most pressing social problems: domestic violence and the emerging use of digital technology to enact and escalate abuse and stalking. Technology-facilitated domestic violence threatens psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing and safety (and signifies risk of homicide), and so warrants attention. Justice systems have a crucial role to play in preventing technology-facilitated violence and safeguarding and empowering victim/survivors. This timely project seeks to assess existing State responses to and regulation of such harms. It expects to provide an evidence base to enhance and develop innovative policing and judicial policy and practice, with benefits to communities and economies.

Helen’s project is titled: Youth Leadership and the Future of Peace and Security
This project aims to investigate the roles youth play in building inclusive and durable peace at local and international levels. It advances one of the first detailed studies of youth-led peacebuilding in three post-conflict contexts in order to generate new insights into best practice for including youth in peace and security policies. Expected outcomes contribute to growing global recognition of youth peace advocacy by providing richer understandings of how to support and empower youth in conflict-affected contexts. The project seeks to strengthen Australia’s leadership in peacebuilding initiatives and enhance policy efforts towards regional and global security and prosperity.

Congratulations Helen and Bridget.

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

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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

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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