Crime and Justice Research Cluster
Email: arts-gj-research-cluster-L@monash.edu
Anna Eriksson
Danielle Tyson
Bree Carlton
Jude McCulloch (Cluster Leader)
Sharon Pickering
Terry MacDonald
Marie Segrave
Crime and Justice embraces a broad range of contemporary and pressing issues that directly relate to security in all its various manifestations. Increasingly justice and security are understood as complementary rather than contradictory ideals that are most fully realised through programs and approaches that recognise the value of social inclusion/cohesion as effective crime prevention and control measures. The cluster includes researchers at the forefront of their fields engaged in studies of issues such as transnational crime, surveillance, prisons, homicide, family violence, restorative justice and broader underlying issues of political and social justice.
This research cluster has expertise in the development, conduct and delivery of targeted commissioned research for State and Federal government and criminal justice agencies, along with expertise in delivering research that translates directly into policy and practice. The researchers have experience in producing timely and innovative research that engages directly with contemporary crime and justice issues grounded in excellent legal and policy analysis skills. The researchers work closely with diverse communities and non government agencies. The researchers in this cluster also have outstanding success in obtaining nationally competitive grants on issues of significant national benefit.
The cluster works to foster new knowledge in crime and justice through groundbreaking research, editorial positions on a range of international peer review journals, extensive high quality publications with major publishers and highly ranked journals, supervision and support of post graduate researchers, wide ranging and well established international networks and collaborations, and links with non government organisations and criminal justice.
Members:
Bree Carlton: prisons, decarceration and abolition, prisoner’s human rights, maximum security, high security, supermax, global prisons, prisoner experiences and resistance, prison design, state crime, state accountability, private prisons, prison industrial complex, history of crime and punishment, history of prisons, women and imprisonment, post-release mortality, legacies of imprisonment.
Anna Eriksson: restorative justice, transitional justice, cultures of violence, post-conflict criminology, peace building, penology, prisons, philosophies of punishment, ownership and constructions of justice, crime prevention.
Jude McCulloch: crimes of the powerful, state crime, deaths in custody, transnational crime, access to justice, terrorism, counter terrorism, law enforcement, community legal centres, social movements, intelligence, security, national security, transnational crime, crime and political economy, neo-liberalism and crime.
Sharon Pickering: transnational crime, migration, refugees, deaths at the border, gender and crime, counter-terrorism, sex trafficking, policing, state crime, human rights.
Marie Segrave: trafficking, migrant labour exploitation, border policing, cross-border law enforcement, migration networks and practices, globalisation & transnational crime, gender and crime, women and imprisonment, victims of crime
Danielle Tyson: intimate partner homicide; family violence; child homicide following parental separation and divorce; mental illness and filicide; sexual assault; gender and crime; cultural criminology; criminal law and criminology.
Terry Macdonald: justice in political institutions; global social and political justice; theories of democracy and political legitimacy; globalization and non-state actors.
International Collaborations:
The cluster has extensive networks amongst international scholars in Europe, the United States, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Members of the cluster host an annual international expert roundtable at Prato in Italy on transnational crime. The cluster members have convened international round tables and conferences on law enforcement and terrorism. The cluster frequently host international scholars at Monash. Cluster members are frequently invited to international conferences and expert seminars as participants and plenary and key note speakers. Edited books, special editions of journals and anthologies edited by members on issues such as borders, deaths in custody, transnational crime, surveillance and prisons bring together leading international scholars. Members of the cluster are also regularly invited to contribute to international collections and leading international journals.
Postgraduate Research:
Post graduates supervised by members of the cluster enjoy the advantages of an international community of scholars at the forefront of their fields. Post graduates have the opportunity to undertake a joint PhD with King’s College London. In 2009 post graduates involved in research on crime and justice topics will undertake seminars, present their work and engage in writing circles with a host of international scholars and in conjunction with post graduates from Europe and the United States at Monash Prato campus in Italy. Post graduates are supported financially and practically through our network of international scholars to undertake field research in a broad range of international locations. The cluster’s well established international connections and national criminal justice networks are also used to assist completed post graduates to obtain post doctoral fellowships and embark on careers in academic and other fields.
Current and ongoing projects:
Bree Carlton: (in collaboration with Marie Segrave): The Melbourne CityMission Cairnlea Housing Project documents and evaluates the Cairnlea housing and support model, focused on an assessment of the model's ability to assist women experiencing disadvantage to achieve both housing and non-housing outcomes after exit from prison.
Dr Carlton (in collaboration with Dr Segrave) is currently developing a national research initiative 'Legacies of Imprisonment', which encompasses a qualitative investigation into the inter-generational impacts of criminal justice processes on children, families and the community.
‘Surviving Outside’: Post Release trends in Victoria 1997-2007 is a pilot study arising from the broader legacies of imprisonment research project. It is a qualitative study of women’s post release mortality in Victoria drawing on interviews with newly released prisoners, service providers, case workers and advocates. It aims to assess the extent to systemic neglect resulting in repeated incarceration increases the risk of early death and contribute to policy development to alleviate these risks.
Anna Eriksson: Dr Eriksson is currently undertaking a major internationally comparative project on prisons and the use of punishment together with Professor John Pratt from Victoria University, New Zealand. The project is titled Penal excess and penal exceptionalism: contrasts in imprisonment between Anglophone (England, New Zealand and New South Wales representing Australia) and Scandinavian (Norway, Sweden and Finland) societies. The project will be finishing in 2011. Dr Eriksson is also undertaking further research around restorative justice, transitional justice, and community – policing partnerships.
Jude McCulloch: Professor McCulloch is currently undertaking a large Australian Research Council funded project with Professor Mark Peel on the history of community legal centres in Victoria. The project aims to establish the historical and continuing importance of Community Legal Centres in terms of access to justice, law reform and social policy. This includes understanding and documenting their role and impact as an influential training ground for members of the legal profession. This understanding will support centres to engage with and recruit future generations of potential volunteers and workers, and strengthen networks within and between the legal sector and the broader community. Professor McCulloch is continuing to undertake research and scholarship in relation to the ‘war on terror’ in the context of neo-liberal globalisation. In collaboration with Dr Wilson she is also conducting research on police and controlled operations. She co-convenes the Prato International Roundtable on Transnational Crime (with Associate Professor Pickering).
Sharon Pickering is currently undertaking a review of illegal brothels for the Department of Justice (with Dr JaneMaree Maher). Associate Professor Pickering is writing a book on women’s unauthorised border crossings into the global north, that builds on her previous work around sex trafficking (with Segrave and Milivojevic). She is undertaking an international study of deaths at the border with Dr Leanne Weber which includes new empirical research on the ways migration and border enforcement policies promote the loss of life. Associate Professor Pickering recently completed a major study (with Professor McCulloch) on counter-terrorism policing with Victoria Police. She co-convenes the Prato International Roundtable on Transnational Crime.
Marie Segrave: Dr Segrave is currently undertaking a pilot project examining temporary migrant labour exploitation in regional Australia. This project builds on her ongoing work examining national response to people trafficking, the enforcement of national migration regimes, the regulatory practices of state authority and contemporary migration patterns.
In addition, Dr Segrave (along with Dr Carlton) is currently developing a national research initiative 'Legacies of Imprisonment', which entails a qualitative investigation into the inter-generational impacts of criminal justice processes on children, families and the community. Part of this project includes qualitative research into women’s experiences of survival and non-survival post-release and an evaluation of an existing women-only post-release program operating in Victoria.
Dr Segrave is also a co-investigator on the Australia Research Council funded project (with Dr Wilson and in collaboration with Victoria Police) examining the interface between police and victims of crime.
Danielle Tyson : Dr Tyson (in collaboration with Thea Brown, Professor of Social Work at Monash University) is developing a study investigating child homicide in the context of parental separation and divorce. The first stage of this three stage project aims to investigate the largest single type of child homicide by parents, filicide in the context of parental separation and divorce, and to identify the links, if any, between the perpetrator’s mental health and the recognition, or otherwise, of the perpetrator’s mental health problems following separation both by the family and by treating professionals before the event. This includes a qualitative analysis of case files held at the Office of the Coroner, transcripts of criminal trials held at the Office of Public Prosecutions and media articles relating to all cases of filicide in the context of parental separation and divorce in Victoria over a ten-year period. This understanding will reveal important data likely to be of benefit to professionals working in this area and will lead to the recommendation of policy proposals for the services addressing this problem, so that services will be better able to identify and respond to the issue before the children’s deaths result.
Dr Tyson’s on-going research examines changing social and legal responses to please of provocation in cases of intimate partner homicide in Australia and overseas. She is currently writing a book entitled Sex, Culpability and the Defence of Provocation which is due for publication with Routledge-Cavendish late 2010 as part of their Discourses of Law series.
Terry Macdonald: Dr Macdonald’s current research focuses on normative issues of justice and legitimacy that arise in relation to the institutionalised exercise of power at State, transnational and global levels. One major ongoing research project aims to identify new principles and institutions of (democratic) political justice capable of holding State and non-state actors accountable for the power they wield transnationally in the context of globalization. Another newer project aims to articulate a clear normative account of the value of political ‘legitimacy’ in liberal thought, and in doing so develop a better understanding of the conditions under which the use of violence and coercive power within social and political institutions can be morally justified.