Murder or manslaughter? NSW ponders the provocation problem

In Parliament last week, NSW took steps towards better understanding, and potentially solving, the problems posed by the partial defence of provocation. This comment analyses key arguments presented to the Parliamentary Select Committee for the retention and abolition of the partial defence of provocation.

Legal loophole protecting violent men : why the defence of provocation needs to change

This comment analyses the successful use of the provocation defence in New South Wales in cases of male perpetrated intimate homicide. In doing so, it makes an argument for why the defence should be abolished.

Time to act - provocation must be rejected as an excuse for murder

This opinion piece provides an argument for why the Select Committee of the New South Wales Parliamentary Inquiry into the partial defence of provocation should reccomend abolition of this controversial partial defene to murder. 

The mandatory life sentence for murder : an argument for judicial discretion in England

In 1965, alongside the abolition of capital punishment, a mandatory life sentence for murder was implemented in England and Wales. The mandatory life sentence served as a signal to the public that the criminal justice system would still implement the most severe sanction of life imprisonment in cases of murder. Nearly 50 years later, this article examines whether the imposition of a mandatory life sentence for murder is still in the best interests of justice or whether English homicide law would be better served by a discretionary sentencing system. In doing so, the article considers debates surrounding the political and public need for a mandatory life sentence for murder by drawing upon interviews conducted with 29 members of the English criminal justice system. This research concludes that a discretionary sentencing framework is required to adequately respond to the many contexts within which the crime of murder is committed.

NSW parliamentary inquiry recommends partial reform to provocation law

This piece reviews the recommendations for reform put forward by the NSW Parliamentary Committee into the Partial Defence of Provocation. 

Twitter free Iran: an evaluation of Twitter's role in public diplomacy and information operations in Iran's 2009 election crisis

Social media platforms such as Twitter pose new challenges for decision-makers in an international crisis. We examine Twitter’s role during Iran’s 2009 election crisis using a comparative analysis of Twitter investors, US State Department diplomats, citizen activists and Iranian protestors and paramilitary forces. We code for key events during the election’s aftermath from 12 June to 5 August 2009, and evaluate Twitter. Foreign policy, international political economy and historical sociology frameworks provide a deeper context of how Twitter was used by different users for defensive information operations and public diplomacy. Those who believe Twitter and other social network technologies will enable ordinary people to seize power from repressive regimes should consider the fate of Iran’s protestors, some of whom paid for their enthusiastic adoption of Twitter with their lives.

Bloods, Crips and Southern Cross Soldiers: we are all gangbangers now!

This paper presents findings from the author's PhD thesis exploring violent youth subcultures in Australia. It addresses whether growing uncertainties around issues of cultural identity and belonging in an era of risk has produced more defensive models of DIY youth culture at a local scale. Theoretically, the author examines whether globalisation has unsettled normative youth subject positions associated with the nation-state, problematising conventional logics of youth cultural formation (i.e. which view questions of race and racism through a white/black, mainstream/subculture binary). As Beck (1992;1999) argues, the de-bounding influence of globalisation has led to an ambivalent set of relations where forms of youth identity have become freed from the nation-state and class based forms of community and must be self-organised. In particular, he argues that this has produced cosmopolitan subjects and social movements as well as ‘counter-modern’ subjects and cultures. This paper applies Beck’s theories alongside theories focused on global/local influences on youth culture to an ethnographic study of two violent youth subcultures in Australia, these being the white ‘patriotic’ youth formation which emerged in the Cronulla riots and youth gang formations in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In doing so the author examines the extent to which violent youth subcultures in Australia can be regarded as strategic responses intended to restore forms of collective cultural belonging at a local scale vis a vis ‘the global’ and its destabilizing influences.

Changing provocation law could legitimise lethal acts of domestic violence

The O'Farrell government must reconsider their recommendation to retain a restricted version of the controversial partial defence of provocation. The government has released a draft exposure bill recommending reform of a partial defence that has long attracted criticism and community concern. Under the proposed reform, the defence will be significantly restricted and will be renamed the "partial defence of extreme provocation".

‘Neojihadism’ and YouTube : Patani militant propaganda dissemination and radicalization

This article examines the use of YouTube by the new generation of Patani 2. Muslim militants in their dissemination of propaganda and radical identity formation. These fighters have now brought their neojihadist war to the ‘Virtual’. Videos of Patani shuhada and Buddhist beheadings are regularly posted on YouTube, with the aim of legitimizing their ‘defensive jihad’. While most of the efforts in countering virtual terrorist radicalization have focused on jihadist websites, forums and blogs, very little attention has been paid to the relationship between the ‘YouTube effect’ and neojihadist violence. This article offers an analysis of the use of YouTube by the Patani Muslim insurgency in order to extract the ideological themes which enable us to understand the process of glocal neojihadist radicalization in southern Thailand.

The janus face of new media propaganda: The case of Patani neojihadist YouTube warfare and its Islamophobic effect on cyber-actors

Surfing on the Internet 2.0 revolution, Patani 2.0 has allowed Patani neojihadist militants to access new competitive spaces and create their own imagined online community by penetrating new realms of the Internet. This article discusses the use of new media militant propaganda by Patani militants and how it is Janus faced. It further examines how the Patani 2.0 social interaction enabled by social media such as YouTube leads to group cohesion among certain actors and the formation of a collective identity that is clustered around the notions of Muslim victimization and defensive jihad; and how, at the same time, it reinforces antithetical identities and fosters group identity competition, where one religious group is often pitted against another. As a result, the Janus effect of Patani neojihadist YouTube online propaganda, while it primarily seeks to radicalize, also generates a reactionary, often virulent, anti-Muslim response from the movement's critics.