Reports have emerged today that police officers in Victoria are being forced to “babysit” prisoners who cannot fit into the state’s crowded prisons, leading to renewed criticism of the Denis Napthine-led…
Victims of sexual assault with a disability are often doubted when reporting their abuse.
Joseph Ma. Rosell
People with disabilities suffer higher rates of sexual assault than are seen in the broader community. They also suffer barriers to reporting which mean the available figures are likely to significantly…
Targets for abuse: Roma women outside court in Larisa, central Greece.
Nikolas Giakoumidis/AP/Press Association Images
Once again Roma people are in the news and, as ever, they are the focus of prejudice and vilification. The most recent story surrounds alleged child abduction in Greece, following a raid on a Roma encampment…
The number of inmates in Victorian prisons is on the rise as part of the government’s tough on crime stance. But at what cost?
shutterstock
Locking up people is easy. It is the first refuge of intellectually bankrupt politicians clamouring for votes by “getting tough” on crime. A good general will read history before going to war, so a good…
In the good old days you could spot a robber from his glossy finish.
foilman
Two recent incidents have shown that you no longer need to risk life and limb to rob a bank. In September, an attempted cyber-robbery at a London branch of Santander was stopped in its tracks and shortly…
Once again, the issue of mental illness and public danger has hit the headlines, following the murder of Christina Edkins by Phillip Simelane. It was reported Simelane was released from prison with no…
Christina Edkins’ murder was a rare and awful thing.
Joe Giddens/PA
1,200 killed by mental patients – shock ten-year toll exposes care crisis The Sun used this apparently shocking statistic this week to blame the criminal justice system for the death of Christina Edkins…
Bandidos bike gang member Jacques Teamo, who faced court after last week’s Broadbeach brawl.
AAP
Australia has two types of bikies: Conservatives and Radicals. The Conservative lifestyle involves riding big bikes, drinking a lot, punching your mates and enemies, then falling over and sleeping it off…
An international team of forensic scientists from all disciplines is investigating Kenya’s mall attack.
EPA/Dai Kurokawa
The entire world witnessed last month’s horrifying terrorist attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Now forensic experts from Interpol, US, UK, Germany, and Canada have joined Kenyan law enforcement…
Anononymised information from emergency departments can improve policing.
Dominic Alves
With so many lurid reports of violence on our TV screens, it’s easy to think that the police know about all or most incidents. But they don’t. The National Crime Victimisation Survey in the US and the…
A monument to a sex worker in Amsterdam. Is it time the media discourse around sex workers in society changed?
mo's
Melbourne sex worker Tracy Connelly was brutally murdered in her van last week. In a sad irony, Connelly was killed metres from where sex workers and their allies demonstrated their support for a global…
Despite the amount of media coverage, rates of violence are falling worldwide.
Wikimedia Commons / Joseph Kelley
There is a growing consensus among scholars that rates of violence in Western countries are steadily declining, and have been doing so for centuries. The statistic used by most people who support this…
Police will interview suspects following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby but how they do it is important.
PA/Dominic Lipinski
There are strong parallels to be drawn between last week’s Woolwich murder and the Boston bombings in April, and not just because of the terrorism connection. The subsequent shooting and hospitalisation…
Uncensored pictures of the Woolwich murder were quickly beamed around the world - what does research say about the use of violent imagery in mass media?
EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga
Even in a city with London’s savage history, the Woolwich murder is especially distressing. A man has been horrifically and wilfully murdered in public. Footage of this appalling crime has spread through…
We need to look beyond bikies for a solution to tackle organised crime in Australia.
AAP/NSW Police
Last week, the High Court upheld Queensland’s controversial criminal association laws, which had been challenged by the Gold Coast Chapter of the Finks Motor Cycle Club and Pompano Pty Ltd. The challenge…
There is a clear link between communication disorders and young offenders – but what can we do about it?
Youth justice image from www.shutterstock.com
Half of Australia’s young male offenders have a clinically significant, previously unidentified language deficit. It’s a shocking figure that comes after ten years worth of research into the oral language…
Describing child exploitation material as child pornography risks legitimising a serious criminal offence.
Child crying image from www.shutterstock.com
Pornography was once banned, part of a subterranean culture where photographs, 8 mm films, and books were sold and shared illicitly. Over the past few decades, however, pornography and erotica have become…
Every city has them - the neighbourhoods that everyone else looks down on. In Australia, Sydney has “Westies”. Brisbane has “Logan bogans”. And in Melbourne, the western suburb of Sunshine is colloquially…
Protesters march against the torture at Abu Ghraib; we use social psychology to help understand why people commit such acts.
Shrieking Tree
Social psychology addresses many of the important questions that concern us as human beings. It’s also the subject of newspaper editorials on most days: why is there conflict between groups? How can it…