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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In absorbing some of the press coverage recently, one could be forgiven for thinking a significant percentage of crime in Victoria is perpetrated by young African-Australians. In my PhD study, my academic…
One of the most high profile court decisions on “madness” and crime has concluded. In a unanimous decision, the Oslo District Court in Norway has convicted Anders Behring Breivik of the murder of 77 people…
In April last year I wrote in The Conversation about an innovative financial investment mechanism called Social Impact Bonds, that was designed to address some of society’s wicked problems by engaging…
The spiralling rise in shooting crimes in Sydney’s western suburbs requires strong and sustained political, community and police action to make suburbs safe for families. I happen to live in a suburb that…
Applying for a job is stressful enough, but if you have a criminal record, even if it’s not relevant to the job you’re applying for, it can be a nightmare. Employers in Australia regularly discriminate…
The Australia21 report on illicit drugs draws much-needed attention to many serious issues, including the major role played by corrupt police in drug distribution networks. The role played by drugs in…
Few crime victim surveys have been conducted with Chinese populations, but a recently released study, Business and the Risk of Crime in China, analyses the results of the first large scale victimisation…