Thalia Anthony
Developments in Sentencing Principles for Indigenous Offenders: Comparisons and Complexities

This paper provides an overview sentencing principles across Australian jurisdictions, and the impact of sentencing legislation. Until now, the studies (eg Flynn, Douglas, Blagg) have been primarily on remote or urban jurisdiction, I want to assess trends and developments broadly – both geographically and chronologically. It will consider the extent to which Law Reform Commissions have had an impact and whether the formal court system is adequately equipped for this process. I would like to test a theory that traditional modernity/late-modernity conceptions of criminal law do not fit as neatly with respect to Indigenous offenders.

Eileen Baldry, Leanne Dowse, Phillip Snoyman and Melissa Clarence
A critical perspective on Mental Health Disorders and Cognitive Disability in the Criminal Justice System

The growing presence of people with mental health disorders and cognitive disability in criminal justice systems (CJS) is of serious concern. This paper discusses an Australian study linking data from CJS and human service agencies to provide a systemic, institutional analysis of the pathways these persons take into and through the CJS. Early insights indicate the importance of an integrated and critical conceptualisation of justice, social and health involvements that moves beyond compartmentalised approaches. It recognizes the CJS and the community as part of a fluid continuum for these persons and suggests how these persons are rendered invisible in the broader social and body politic.

Jenny Bargen
Sustainable reform in government responses to offending by young people – a pipe dream or a possibility?

During the 1980s and 1990s successive NSW governments introduced a plethora of arguably progressive juvenile justice policies and practices, often following inquiries carried out by parliamentary committees or community based coalitions. None was as far reaching in its ambitions as that outlined in the Young Offenders Act 1997, but others, which were introduced without legislative bases, were designed to achieve similar aims to those set out in the YOA. Despite a number of positive independent and government reviews (Chan, 2005; Trimboli, 2000; NSW Attorney General’s Department, 2002), most of which found that the scheme established under the YOA was achieving the objects set out in the legislation, the NSW government has chosen to ignore many of the recommendations in these reviews, and has introduced reforms to the scheme set out in the YOA that, while still in their infancy, may mean that the scheme will fail in the long term. At the same time, amendments to the Bail Act 1987 have resulted in exponential increases in the daily numbers of children and young people in custody, and there has been a rush to adopt risk based assessment of young offenders. Under the NSW State Plan, reducing re-offending has been adopted as the primary goal of all responses to juvenile crime. This is despite the warnings over many years about the dangers of focusing solely on reducing offending (eg Seymour 1988). Reliance on risk assessment has also been the subject of critical debate in jurisdictions where it was introduced during the 1980s and 1990s (see, eg, Muncie, 2005; Goldson et al, 2006).

This paper will ponder the possibilities for sustainable progressive reform in juvenile justice policies and practice in this context.

Lillian Barry
Women in Prison: First viewings of women-centred correctional centres.

This paper explores the early journey of a naïve researcher into two women’s correctional centres. The initial aim of the research was to explore the restorative and holistic benefits of a horticultural therapy program for female inmates. Through implementing this project in two women-centred facilities in New South Wales, early perceptions of women-centric ideologies were brought into sharp relief against their punitive focus. As a result the focus of the research broadened to investigating the effects of the penal institution on program implementation and outcomes for female inmates. My responses as researcher, as well as prison staff and inmates to institutional intersections were seen as reflective of the coercive and intransigent penal environment.

Louise Boon-Kuo
Policing and the criminal character in migration law – the Haneef case

On the same day the court granted bail pending determination of terrorism related charges, Dr Haneef’s visa was cancelled for failing the character test. Had he decided to post bail, he would have been detained in immigration detention. While some have argued that the normalization of security objectives in migration regulation has worked to bring migration law closer to the rule of law, this paper argues that Dr Haneef’s experience tells us something different. The paper focuses on the way in which the broad discretion in the immigration character test facilitates the seamless incorporation of security policing objectives into migration decision-making processes, and shifts accountability for that discretion to the realm of politics not law.

David Brown
How terrorism and terrorist prosecutions affect prison regimes

This paper will tackle the neglected issue of how terrorism and terrorist prosecutions are already and may further affect prison systems and regimes.

Among the issues addressed will be the tendency to consolidate the legitimacy of ‘supermax’ facilities such as Goulburn’s HRMU and practices of isolation, secrecy and militarisation in the penal system; the effect such practices and conditions of containment have on the prospects of terrorism suspects being able to receive legal advice, conduct a defence and receive a fair trial; the fear of ‘contamination’ and ‘conversion’ of heavily criminalised prisoners to Islam and potentially to terrorist sympathies; the fear that prisons may come to operate as terrorist ‘incubators’ and the measures being taken to address this fear and their likely effects.

Daniel Calizaya-Jave, Jane Goodman-Delahunty, Lindsay Hewson
The use of multimedia in jury trials for jurors of high or low English proficiency

Jury understanding of expert DNA evidence is often not optimal, and has been shown to be particularly problematic among jurors from a non-English-language background. In this experimental study, two hundred first-year psychology students served as simulated jurors in a criminal homicide trial. Independent variables were presentation mode (traditional oral vs oral plus multimedia) and English proficiency level of the mock jurors (high vs low). Analyses were conducted of pre vs post trial understanding of scientific and random match probability evidence to assess the extent to which multimedia facilitated comprehension in all jurors. Implications of the findings for jury practice are reviewed.

Bree Carlton
Systemic Neglect: The Politics of Official Transparency and Accountability Over Prisoner Placements in High-Security

This paper argues that given the documented risks of harm, abusive treatment and the potential impacts of lengthy periods spent in high-security, increased scrutiny and accountability around the circumstances in which prisoners are placed in such units is critical. Officials argue there are strict protocols for the transfer of prisoners to high-security. Yet they refuse to release information regarding how these protocols operate in practice. Prisoner dangerousness is officially deployed to silence critical questions around who is transferred to high-security, the reasons for their classification, how they are treated while in high-security and the avenues open to them to get transferred back to the mainstream. Using prisoner case studies from past and present in Victoria and NSW, this paper argues there is a lack of consistency and fairness in the application of prisoner placements, thus confirming the urgent need for greater official transparency and accountability around how we house those considered beyond redemption and rehabilitation.

Garner Clancey
Crime Prevention in NSW - ‘New Moral Hygiene’ of ‘Transformative Potential’?

There is much debate about whether crime prevention techniques represent neo-liberal ‘responsibilisation’ technologies designed to assert a ‘new moral hygiene’ or offer ‘transformative potential’ through inclusive and participatory mechanisms. Crime prevention practice and techniques in New South Wales will provide the context for exploring how and by whom crime ‘problems’ are identified, prioritised and responses developed. The influence of marginalised voices and opportunities for resistance will be considered through review of relevant contemporary policies, guidelines and legislation. In so doing, tentative observations will be drawn about the drift toward crime prevention as the ‘new moral hygiene’.

Anne Cossins
Restorative Justice and Sexual Assault Cases: The Theory and the Practice

Restorative justice advocates have made a number of claims about the effectiveness of restorative justice in relation to sexual assault crimes, such as its ability to defuse power relations between the parties and heal the harm. This paper examines whether or not restorative justice is one of the ways forward in the difficult area of prosecuting child sex offences by re-analysing some of the data reported by Kathleen Daly and comparing restorative justice with other reforms to the sexual assault trial. It concludes that there is insufficient evidence to support the view that there are inherent benefits in the restorative justice process that provide victims of sexual assault with a superior form of justice.

Selda Dagistanli
“Victims Sacrificed to a god of due process”: protecting our women from Muslim rapists and the courts

Victim credibility in sexual assault trials has historically been undermined through references to a complainant’s sexual history, what they were wearing and whether they were behaving ‘provocatively’ at the time of the attack, whether they had past sexual relations with the accused and so on. Systemic legal bias against women within an Australian context has been apparent until recent legislative changes, which explicitly recognised the rights of victims before the courts, were implemented in NSW. The changes occurred after the intense media coverage of the Sydney gang rapes that occurred in 2000 and 2002 and a subsequent media campaign in 2007, demanding the more rigorous recognition of complainants’ rights in sexual assault trials. The perpetrators of these gang rapes were, respectively, a group of Lebanese-Australian Muslim youths, and four brothers – Pakistani immigrant Muslims.

In this paper, I argue that unprecedented public attention to the personal suffering of rape victims marks a shift in moral emphasis and blame from the rhetoric that highlighted the callousness of the offenders and subsequent calls for their severe punishment, to the rhetoric that emphasised the callousness of the courts (particularly judges and defence counsel) and the ordeal of the criminal trial process for sexual assault complainants. Within this context, this paper explores the way in which the courts balanced the rights of the accused with those of the complainants in these highly politicised cases. Particular attention will be given to the racial and personal characteristics of the victims and perpetrators in order to deduce the degree to which popular ideologies around the Arab ‘invader’ played a role in the highly publicised and paternalistic recognition of rape victims’ rights.

Michael Grewcock
Colonial genocide and state crime

This paper aims to provide an outline for how criminologists might approach the issue of colonial genocide in Australia. The paper provides an overview of some of the debates that have arisen amongst historians in relation to the impact of European colonisation on Australia’s Indigenous population and locates the discussion of genocide in two broad but overlapping contexts: the processes of colonisation and frontier violence; and the policies associated with protection, assimilation and forced removal. The paper argues that the narrow legal definition of genocide established by the 1948 Genocide Convention provides an inadequate framework for analysing the colonial experience. In particular, it argues that the focus on intentional state killing provides an inadequate measure for state deviance. Instead, colonial genocide should be understand as incorporating a range of state practices that legitimised and enforced the authority of the developing colonial settler state; and maintained the systemic subjugation, de-identification and abuse of the Indigenous population. 

Cliff Holdom
Extreme Transport: Custodial Transport in Western Australia & Beyond

The death in custody of Aboriginal elder Mr Ian Ward at Kalgoorlie on 27 January 2008 following a regional journey in a prisoner transport triggered an unprecedented level of public concern in relation to privatised prisoner transport arrangements in Western Australia. Yet such a death was foreseeable and therefore preventable, given recent publication of a comprehensive inspection report which detailed the parlous state of the custodial vehicle fleet, and the continual exposure of prisoners and escort staff alike to extreme levels of risk, especially in regional and remote areas. It is argued that the risks inherent in custodial transport operations are disproportionately bourn by indigenous prisoners and is thereby indicative of a justice system tainted by systemic racism.

Christine Jennett
Using a Flashpoints model of Public Order Policing in Indigenous communities to explore the structures and practices of internal colonial power relations in Australia

The structuralist concept of internal colonialism was much debated throughout the late sixties and seventies (Stavenhagen 1965; Carmichael & Hamilton 1967; Blauner 1969;Hechter 1975; Hartwig 1978) to analyse power relations between dominant majority populations and racially and culturally constructed minorities, especially ‘aboriginal’ peoples’ (Werther 1992). More recently, twenty-first century public order policing practices have been analysed by King and Waddington (2005) using Waddington’s ‘Flashpoints’ model. In this paper the theory of internal colonialism will be used to discuss the limits and possibilities of applying the Flashpoints model of public order policing to events at Wadeye in the Northern Territory and Palm Island in Queensland.

Jan Jordan
Victims as Survivors

The image of ‘woman equals victim’ persists within criminology, despite challenges from feminists and many crime victims themselves. In the context of rape especially, debate has raged regarding the appropriateness of terms such as ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’. This paper explores the nuances of this debate by drawing on the narratives of 15 women attacked by the same serial rapist in New Zealand. Their accounts of how they were simultaneously impacted upon and provoked to act provide a more complex lens through which to explore the significance of a shift from victims or survivors to viewing victims as survivors. Such a shift in perception enables fuller appreciation of the varied and creative ways in which women under attack demonstrate their determination to resist victimhood and embrace survival.

Rachel King, Peter Newcombe, Julie van den Eynde, Christine Bond
When No Means Yes: Issues with Consent Definition in Queensland Police Officers’ Perceptions

The rape of a 10 year-old girl by nine men in Aurukun sparked considerable furore when prosecutor Steve Carter said the case involved "consensual sex in a non-legal manner”. The outcome of the Aurukun case is supported by recent research findings that decision-making by legal officers continues to reflect stereotypical notions of ‘real rape’ and ‘genuine victims’.

The present research investigated whether victim characteristics, the victim/offender relationship and the expression of non-consent predicted the decisions police made regarding whether a rape had occurred. Queensland Police Officers (n=14) were interviewed regarding their perceptions of rape and ensuing decision-making when presented with four case scenarios in which non-consent and victim characteristics were manipulated. Results will be discussed in relation to Australian police practices and legislation.

Tyrone Kirchengast
The Growth of Victim Agency in Australian Jurisprudence: Limitations and Challenges

The states and territories of Australia have followed the international trend supporting the needs of crime victims by introducing various schemes integrating victim interests into the criminal justice system. These schemes take the form of victims’ compensation programs, declaration of victim rights and victim impact statements as relevant to offender sentencing. In terms of victim impact statements, the courts have tended to marginalise victim input by identifying it as unreliable or prejudicial to the objective assessment of the offence required during sentencing. Internationally, however, the victim enjoys greater privileges in terms the court’s use of victim impact evidence. In light of this experience, this paper assesses the extent to which the victim ought to be able to exercises agency within Australian criminal jurisprudence.

Murray Lee
A Wealth of Fear

In the past decade a number of scholars have noted that 'fear of crime' is a concept born of the 1960s in the USA and exported across much of the Western world as a result of the popularity of the victim survey.

While I have explored the reasons for this elsewhere (Lee 2007) here the focus turns to the why many 'at risk' populations do not fear crime in the way we might expect? The paper explores the ways in which fear of crime as a policy problem and cultural theme is closely linked to the distribution of wealth at both a national and global level. It suggests that a knowledge of these linkages is paramount if we are to move the study of fear of crime forward both conceptually and methodologically.

Catriona McComish
Deviant women: what’s in a label?

This presentation describes a research study that uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the marked rise of incarceration of women and the significantly higher level of mental health disorder diagnosed in the female population compared to the male population of prisoners. A retrospective approach is used to examine and compare the pathways, into and out of the criminal justice system, of an identified cohort of women and men with mental health disorders and/or cognitive disabilities by accessing data held across criminal justice, health, housing, community services and disability services. In order to develop a holistic understanding of women’s experiences in the criminal justice system, the second stage of the research is to explore the women’s stories of their contact with the criminal justice and mental health systems highlighting how they construct meaning and identities through their narratives.

The hypothesis underlying this research is that the impact of labelling and stigmatisation differentially affects women in prison leading to the likelihood of being labelled as mad thus doubly stigmatising the woman and creating a greater probability of continuing imprisonment.

Jude McCulloch
From Garrison State to Garrison Planet: The ‘War on Terror’ and the Rise of a Global Carceral Complex

The paper explores the links between domestic criminal justice systems and violence and incarceration in the 'war on terror'. It describes the nature and extent of state terror that are part of the everyday reality of state violence and incarceration in domestic criminal justice system in the United States and Australia. It draws links between this and violence and incarceration in the United States led 'war on terror'. It also documents and analyzes the way that the terror of the United States criminal justice system is being exported under the banner of the 'war on terror' and the impact of the role of this trade in proliferating state terror. Issues considered include private profit and mass incarceration, racialized punishment, sexual violence in incarceration, and the continuities evident in the 'war on crime', the 'war on drugs' and the 'war on terror'.

Katherine McFarlane
From Care to Crime – Children in State care and the development of criminality

Welfare drift – the exodus of children in State care to juvenile justice and then onto adult prisons – is an international phenomenon, but one which has received little academic attention. Prison statistics the world over reveal that careleavers are over-represented in prisons and juvenile detention facilities, but few programs or policies acknowledge this group. This paper examines what is known about State care and the development of criminality, and highlights the findings of PhD research into early onset of delinquency, over-representation in serious or violent offences and variations in recidivism rates in NSW.

Sanja Milivojevic
Women's bodies, moral panic and the world game: Sex trafficking, the 2006 Football World Cup and beyond

Although recognized as an international problem since the mid-nineteenth century, sex trafficking has garnered increased attention since the early 1990s. Now predominantly identified as an organized crime issue, sex trafficking has been routinely referred to as ‘modern day slavery’.

Feminists and criminologists have been increasingly addressing this issue, yet the critical perspective is often silenced. This paper will review how the moral panic around the 2006 FIFA World Cup brought into focus some of the key debates on trafficking and the pressing issues that it raised relating to the representation of women, human rights and mobility. It will demonstrate that although this event generated punitive approaches to women considered vulnerable of trafficking and assisted in the enhancement of border controls, the critical evaluation of measures imposed to women in relation to the World Cup has been largely absent.

Wendy O'Brien
Indigenous childhood prostitution : circumstances of disadvantage

In March 2008 young Indigenous girls from the NSW towns of Moree and Boggabilla took their stories of child prostitution to the media in the hope that national attention might mobilise the response needed to stop the trade of girls as young as eight to truck drivers passing through Indigenous communities adjacent to highways. This paper outlines the need for an awareness of childhood prostitution as a consequence of circumstances of disadvantage rather than anomalous individual behaviour. Critical criminology provides the discursive space to challenge the ideological and methodological barriers to acknowledging the prevalence of childhood prostitution in Indigenous communities.

Margaret Pereira
Losing the War on Drugs

Drug use has a long history but the illegality of drugs has occurred more recently within historical, political and economic conditions. From the early 19th century the sale of opium to China financed British India, while devastating addicted Chinese populations. Since then opium has funded wars in Afghanistan and Indochina and those who illegally grow or sell the drug face severe penalties. The declaration of the global War on Drugs in1969 vowed to eliminate heroin by attacking it at the source. This paper will argue that these efforts have mostly been a failure and have actually exacerbated the drug problem. Recent attempts to eradicate heroin production have seen opium crops substituted by a massive production of methamphetamines and other synthetic substances. Meanwhile, drug related offences account for staggering increases in prison populations worldwide.

Sharon Pickering
Researching Counter-terrorism: critical and other reflections

Some policing organisations are considering a more nuanced approach to terrorism from that of their political masters, one that is informed by an understanding of terrorism which takes seriously critical accounts of the causes of terrorism and the risks seemingly inherent to the criminalisation and suppression approaches of traditional counter-terrorism policing. At the coalface of crime, security and civil society, police engagement with communities and the resulting relationships are the primary generators of police legitimacy critical for their effective function. The relationship between police and diverse communities stands to redefine how this most powerful state agent goes about counter-terrorism and realigning its own position in a time of perceived insecurity through actively enhancing social cohesion. This paper will report on the findings of a three year study between Monash University and Victoria Police on Counter-terrorism policing and culturally diverse communities. This paper will question the extent to which policing can be active agents in promoting social cohesion in the counter-terrorism environment and how critical criminology can contribute/critique such an approach.

John Pratt
Penal Excess and Penal Exceptionalism. Contrasts in imprisonment between Anglophone and Scandinavian societies.

There has been much discussion of convergence in penal policy in modern society due to the effects of globalisation, fear of crime, deregulation of the mass media and so on – all of which, on the face of it, make the transfer and exchange of ideas and concerns a straightforward matter. However, there is actually a growing divergence in both prison rates and prison conditions between Anglophone societies (England, New Zealand, Australia) and Scandinavian countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden). While penal populism has been very influential in the former, the latter have been largely immune to it. The paper examines the differing cultural, social and economic arrangements of these societies to explain why this should be so.

Peter Rogers
New Security Challenges: Resilient Tactics of Policing at Public Protests in the UK

This paper draws on recent experiences of policing public protests in the UK; particularly making reference to the use of tactics which 'harden' public spaces limiting public access to open spaces in the city at the Manchester 2005 Labour Party conference and the use of anti-terrorism legislation in the policing of protests at Heathrow airport in 2007. The paper suggests that the structure and form of 'protection' is changing policing as part of the restructuring of resilient governance through the war on terror. The balance of policing in democratic society is shifting towards the protection of the state form the citizen with widespread repercussions for democracy at large.

Emma Ryan
Shocked and Stunned: A Consideration of the Implications of Tasers in Australia

This paper will consider the debate surrounding the introduction of the stun-gun or ‘Tasers’ into Australian policing and argue against their introduction as general issue weapons. This argument is set against concerns about the regulation of police use of force more generally and in light of critical commentary on sub-lethal weaponry from overseas, especially the United States where Taser use by police is widespread. The paper will trace the introduction of Tasers as general issue weapons in Australia and outline the arguments for and against their introduction. Critical issues addressed will include the number of deaths attributed to Taser use in the United States, the problems associated with identifying stun-guns as contributors to death, the capacity of such weapons to reduce the incidence of lethal force in policing and the potential impact of Taser use on over-policed populations.

Michael Salter
Organised abuse and the politics of disbelief

This paper will explore how the issue of organised child sexual abuse has been discursively constructed within broader contests over the signification of child sexual abuse as a whole. In particular, I will analyse the debate on organised abuse as a key site of conflict between different actors in their efforts to produce new meanings about sexual abuse, connect disclosures of abuse with particular practices, and position subjects in particular ways. This paper will explore the dynamics of the debate of organised abuse, and it’s consequences for children sexually abused in organised contexts, drawing in part on qualitative interviews with adult survivors of organised child sexual abuse.

Marie Segrave
Trafficking in persons as labour exploitation

This paper seeks to examine the dominant criminal justice model within which international, national and state responses to trafficking in persons are located. Through drawing on research examining the implementation of national responses to this issue this paper will critically engage with this model- to identify some significant limitations and to bring to the fore issues and concerns that are effectively silenced within the current response. This paper will also outline the possibility of locating trafficking in persons within a broader labour exploitation framework and the potential such a framework holds for offering a more comprehensive response to this issue.

Vicki Sentas
“Do I have to denounce my grandmother?”: Policing diaspora, disrupting identity

The prosecution of three Tamil Australians for alleged membership, provision of support, resources and funds to a ‘terrorist organisation’, namely the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), highlights what’s at stake in the policing of ‘ethnicity’. Criminalising a range of long standing armed struggles outside of Australian territory - including those over Kurdistan and Palestine - intensify strategies of assimilation against multiple diasporas here. This paper argues the effect of policing terrorist organisations is to disrupt collective formations of ethno-political identity. Of interest here are the experiences of those policed; the relation of state power to political subjectivity, and the reproduction of ‘safe’ multiculturalism.

Elizabeth Stanley
Transitional Justice as Industry

Over the last two decades, justice mechanisms such as courts and truth commissions have diffused rapidly around the globe. Many governments and international bodies resort to these mechanisms each time a new post-conflict scenario arises, to the point where there is now a global industry of transitional justice with its own ideology, rationalisations and self-justification.

This paper considers the implications of this industry in terms of (i) how internationals have engaged with local populations in transitional states; (ii) how the involvement of international actors/structures in violations has been exposed or hidden through transitional justice processes; and, (iii) how internationals have connected with opportunities for social justice in the midst of transition.

Brian Steels, Dot Goulding
Using research as a tool of activism

This paper engages with the researchers’ experiences as criminal justice activists in Western Australia. It explores their activist pasts, their move into the world of academia and the ways in which they have attempted to combine their academic research careers with continued, if less aggressive, activism. The paper outlines the obstacles, ethical, financial and professional, which research of this nature entails. It then goes on to discuss the successes and failures of specific criminal justice related research projects they have undertaken over the past decade.

Julie Stubbs
Critical reflections on homicide prosecutions of battered women

Women who kill in response to domestic violence have historically faced great difficulty in having courts recognise their victimisation and the full context of their offence. In this paper I consider the impact of feminist activism and scholarship which has challenged the legal system to adopt a more realistic appraisal of the circumstances of women who kill in response to abuse, with a focus on outcomes since battered women syndrome was first introduce in Australia in 1991. The analysis pays particular attention to Indigenous women who continue to be over-represented as victims and offenders in intimate homicide cases, and whose incarceration rates are cause for alarm.

Molly Townes O’Brien
Exploring the Group-Identity Function of Criminal Law

In every country where the question has been studied, incarceration rates for members of some minority groups greatly exceed those for the majority population. The problem of disproportionate incarceration is not therefore a problem of one ethnic group or one set of historical circumstances. This paper proposes to conceive of the problem as a human problem and a fundamental problem of criminal law. It hypothesizes that criminal law serves a group-identity function, which has historically been important in facilitating social living, but that needs to be carefully examined and revised to achieve justice in increasingly multi-ethnic and mobile societies.

Danielle Tyson
The will to narrate: Imagining the circumstances of child death

This paper examines the processes through which the circumstances of the deaths of three children – Jai, Tyler and Bailey Farquharson – were represented and rendered knowable to both the media and law through particular forms of evidence that placed enormous reliance on the veracity and ‘truth’ of the image (particularly, through the use of a range of visual technologies including interactive on-line slide shows or photo galleries, photographs and videos of police reconstructions, the performance of testimony by specialists and other expert witnesses and the social networking website, Facebook). Whereas previous research on fathers who kill their biological or stepchildren tends to focus on the contexts in which such crimes occur, as involving a history of child abuse or following separation from a female partner for example, this paper thinks through how the circumstances of child death are filtered through the image each inviting a particular reading and judgment of the event. Drawing on the framework of aesthetics (Young 1996; Douzinas and Nead, 1999; Young 2008), the paper examines the proliferation of images and narratives surrounding the trial of Farquharson and its aftermath to consider their affect on the viewer or reader who is disturbed, provoked or moved to respond in particular ways.

Seckin Ungur
Impediments to successful mediation: The effects of motivation, confidence and role on mediation outcomes.

Litigation is a lengthy, stressful and expensive process. Mediation is widely recognised as a less costly alternative to dispute resolution because it provides the potential for parties to come to mutually acceptable solutions and to address the underlying issues that gave rise to the conflict. However, there is little research on what makes mediation successful, or what the impediments to successful mediation may be. The current study considered the effects of participant motivation (i.e keenness to take part in a mandatory mediation) and overconfidence (about achieving their stated goals) on mediation outcomes in the context of Strata disputes processed by the New South Wales Department of Fair Trading Mediation Services Unit. In addition, the effect of role (being an applicant or a respondent) on mediation outcomes was investigated for the first time. This novel aspect of the research yielded the most interesting results. Although mediation was mandatory, applicants were significantly more eager to mediate and were more confident about achieving their goals, but it was respondents who obtained better outcomes and were more satisfied with the mediation. The findings suggest that applicants’ overconfidence may dispose them to disappointment. Implications for government policy, practical applications and further research on mediation are discussed.

Berenike Waubert de Puiseau, Jane Goodman-Delahunty, Lindsay Hewson
Can multimedia assist jurors to understand DNA expert evidence?

Although DNA expert evidence is frequently introduced in criminal cases, empirical studies indicate that jurors struggle with scientific and mathematical information presented orally, and may misconstrue its probative value. Using a pre- and post-test experimental design, in the context of a mock homicide trial, we investigated whether multimedia can facilitate understanding in a community sample of eligible jurors of (a) the underlying biological science and (b) application of mathematical probability. The influence of demographic variables such as juror gender, age, and learning style preference on understanding were explored. The results reveal which groups of jurors benefit the most from the multimedia presentation.

Leanne Weber
Making peace at the border: prospects for the democratisation of global mobility

On occasions, even critical criminologists may tire of relentless critique and seek to speculate instead about an alternative, more positive future. This paper will consider border control from the perspective of peacemaking criminology. It will attempt a kind of ‘history of the future’, noting the eventual relaxation of borders which were once heavily defended, and speculating on the material and political conditions which could promote the democratisation of border crossing under conditions of globalisation.

Rob White
Transnational Environmental Crime and Global Inequality

This paper explores recent trends and issues pertaining to transnational environmental crime and how these are intrinsically linked to questions of global inequality. The paper describes developments relating to the disposal of toxic waste, incidents of trans-border pollution, transportation of hazardous materials, and illegal trade in flora and fauna. Notions of bio-security and bio-piracy are also examined within the context of neo-liberal ‘free trade’ economic frameworks. The paper organises the discussions around the twin themes of the problem of waste, and the problem of bio-diversity. Underpinning the analysis is the contention that exploitation of human beings, of nonhuman animals and of the biosphere is mutually reinforcing. A global political economy provides insight into the social and ecological inequalities associated with the making of, and responses to, environmental harms of a transnational nature.

Rob White, Garry Coventry
Prisoners, Reintegration and the Act of Giving

This paper explores contemporary debates and correctional approaches in the area of prisoner rehabilitation, prisoner reintegration into communities and desistance theory. Our particular concern is to survey key ideas associated with the 'good lives' model of rehabilitation, the 'social recognition' approach to desistance and social capital (including supportive economic resources and the enhancement of individual legitimacy in the community), and the emphasis on the active offender associated with 'restorative justice'. Together, these works form a re-thinking of defensible and worthwhile reintegrative strategies for enhancing the quality of life of prisoners to be released from the ‘warehouse’.

At the centre of our analysis is the notion of reciprocal 'giving' between prisoners and communities and the positive social transformations that allow for and foster the act of giving as part of offender rehabilitation/reintegration programs. We illustrate these general theoretical insights through discussion of voluntary prisoner labour, especially forms of labour which involves responding to natural disasters such as cyclones, fires and floods. Disadvantage, alienation and social inequality are the foundations of working class criminality and most of those who are incarcerated. Developing alternative means by which prisoners can contribute to society offers one potential pathway for personal redemption through community reparation, freedom from incarceration and progressive social change.

Dean Wilson
Researching CCTV: Security networks and the transformation of public space

Internationally there has been growing criminological interest in town-centre CCTV systems. To date research has been sharply divided between administrative studies that pursue technical questions and more critical studies concerned with the constitutive role of CCTV in processes of social exclusion and neo-liberal impulses of urban regeneration. To date however there is a lacuna in our knowledge of how CCTV systems interact with public and private security and how these networks of security are configured in different settings. This paper outlines an ARC Discovery project examining the various security configurations of CCTV in three Australian locations. The paper will discuss the significance of local politics in the engagement of CCTV systems, outlining the significance of shifts in Federal and State government policy that have influenced the roll-out of the technology. It will then proceed to outline key issues in these systems that create variance in the street-level impacts of surveillance technology. The conclusion will outline an observational methodology with the capacity to incorporate wider theoretical concerns with local variation. The paper argues that we need to move beyond simply stating that CCTV intensifies social exclusion, towards a more nuanced understanding of the specific mechanisms through which such exclusion is produced.

Angus Young
In Search of Chinese Jurisprudence

Over the last few decades economic reforms have been the primary policy objective in Asia, legal reforms were however treated as a by product. Much of the new laws were transplanted from Western economies. Hence ideological and cultural contradictions have not been addressed. If China wishes to create a uniquely Chinese modern economy, fundamental legal reforms in harmony with the Chinese culture is logical. But does Chinese jurisprudence exist? Perhaps Chinese philosophy could offer some guidance underlying principles of Chinese jurisprudence to be adapted for a rapidly growing economy.