Alison Wakefield joins UNSW from the UK as Senior Lecturer in Criminology. This semester Alison will be co-ordinating and teaching a second and third year elective 'Issues in Criminal Justice' and running a third year social policy project on the housing needs of prisoners.  She is particularly interested in supervising postgraduate research in the areas of policing and security

Alison has previousy taught in the UK in the Department of Sociology at City University, and prior to this the University of Leicester. She gained her Ph.D from the University of Cambridge in 2001, having obtained a BA from the University of Hull and an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge.  Alison has also worked for the National Foundation for Educational Research as a researcher, and for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a management consultant in a brief stint outside academia.

Alison was Executive Secretary of the British Society of Criminology prior to moving over to Australia.  She remains a Director of the Security Institute, a UK based professional association for the security industry, and sits on the editorial board of Security Journal.  Alison was also, until recently, external examiner of postgraduate programmes in security management at Loughborough University, UK.

Alison's primary research interests are in public and private policing, and much of her research continues to be situated in the private security sector. Among her publications, she has authored Selling Security: The Private Policing of Public Space (Willan Publishing, 2003), which was shortlisted for the British Society of Criminology Book Prize 2003; and she is editor of Ethical and Social Perspectives on Situational Crime Prevention with Andrew von Hirsch and David Garland (Hart Publishing, 2000) and The Sage Dictionary of Policing with Jenny Fleming (Sage, forthcoming December 2008).  Alison has recently undertaken research for the Police Foundation on the value of foot patrol by the police and alternative policing bodies, and she is currently working on a number of publications concerned with issues of security and policing including a textbook for Sage called Security and Crime.

UNSW/HREOC Conference on the Tenth Anniversary of the "Bringing Them Home" Report

Presented by the Indigenous Law Centre (ILC) and the Crime and Justice Research (CJR) Network, Faculty of Law, UNSW; and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Speakers' topics included: Current Overview of Government Responses to the Issue and BTH recommendations; Reflections on the BTH Inquiry Process and Findings of the Inquiry; Analysis of the Failure of Previous Litigation; Current Litigation Community Responses to the Stolen Generations; The Tasmanian Example; Future Prospects for Reparations and Contemporary Removals of Indigenous Children and Young People.

Research on Police Interviewing of Suspects

On 18 July 2007, as part of the CJR Network Seminar Series, Professor Ray Bull presented a seminar on research examining police interviewing of suspects. Professor Bull is Chair in Forensic Psychology at the University of Leicester, UK.

Seminar Abstract:

Up to the mid 1980s almost no substantial guidance was available anywhere in the world to police officers on how best to conduct interviews with suspects. Psychologists had largely ignored this topic.

Into this vacuum in 1986 came an American book which recommended procedures the police could use (in persuading a guilty person to confess). These American procedures were adopted, some were already in use, by a considerable number of police forces around the world. Unfortunately, subsequent work by psychologists and lawyers demonstrates that some of the recommended procedures may, among other negative outcomes, lead to false confessions.

Partly in the light of concerns about how suspects were being treated by some police officers and of courts’ worries about false confessions, the Government in England and Wales brought in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984), which mandated that all police interviews with suspects be recorded and which sought to reduce coercive interviewing. (A limited number of other countries/states/regions more recently have developed similar ‘guidance’.)

Since the late 1980s the tape recordings of such interviews have sometimes been made available for research. In light of such research in the 1990s the police service in the UK improved its training to involve more relevant psychology.

This presentation will overview more recent research on the skills and tactics used by police officers in their interviews of suspects.

Seminar Notes

Designing for Human Rights: the ACT Human Rights Act 2004 and the Alexander Maconochie Centre

On 19 April 2007, as part of the CJR Network Seminar Series, John Paget presented a seminar looking at the relationship of the design and conceptualisation of the Alexander Maconochie Centre and the ACT Human Rights Act 2004.

John Paget is Director of the ACT Prison Project Office, Alexander Maconochie Centre, ACT Corrective Services. He has an extensive range of experience after serving in three correctional jurisdictions across Australia.

Over the period 1992-1997 he was Director Policy and Planning and Assistant Commissioner in the NSW Department of Corrective Services. In this position he was also a member of the Corrections Health Services Board.

In 1997 he was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the South Australian Department for Correctional Services and member of the South Australian Justice Portfolio Leadership Council. These were positions he held until 2003.

In that year he accepted the appointment of Director of the ACT Prison Project. This is a unique project in that the ACT Prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre, is the first prison in Australia to be conceptualised, designed and constructed under a framework provided by the ACT Human Rights Act 2004.

Seminar Notes
Alex. Maconochie Centre Website

International Recognition for CJR Network Academic

A/Prof Jane Goodman-Delahunty from the UNSW School of Psychology has won the American Psychology-Law Society’s 2005-2006 book award for an outstanding contribution to the field of law and psychology.

Jane Goodman-Delahunty and her American colleague, William E Foote, were recognised for their book, Evaluating Sexual Harassment: Psychological, social, and legal considerations in forensic evaluations.

The book demonstrates a successful fusion of law, social, organisational and clinical psychology. It cites more than 500 scholarly sources, which were distilled and synthesised to provide an evidence-based model for practitioners conducting assessments and providing expert evidence in civil forensic settings.

The award will be formally presented at the Third International Congress of Psychology and Law to be held in Adelaide, July 3-8 2007.

New Researcher Database

A central electronic database has been established containing contact details and areas of expertise for researchers who undertake police and law enforcement research. The researcher database is part of Police KnowledgeNET and is open to the public. Researchers can register themselves on the database and can utilise it to search for other researchers who are currently or have previously undertaken police related research.

Link to Database

New Book: Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control

Dr Leanne Weber from the School of Social Science and Policy, UNSW, has produced an edited collection with Sharon Pickering (Monash) entitled Borders, Mobility and Technologies of Control. The book, published by Springer, seeks to develop a critical criminology of the border, highlighting the changing significance of borders in late modernity and analyzing state efforts to control them. The collection features contributions from Australian, British and American scholars.