Claims about women's use of non-fatal force in intimate relationships : A contextual review of Canadian research

Claims that violence is gender-neutral are increasingly becoming “common sense” in Canada. Antifeminist groups assert that the high rates of woman abuse uncovered by major Canadian national surveys conducted in the early 1990s are greatly exaggerated and that women are as violent as men. The production of degendered rhetoric about “intimate partner violence” contributes to claims that women’s and men’s violence is symmetrical and mutual. This article critically evaluates common claims about Canadian women’s use of nonlethal force in heterosexual intimate relationships in the context of the political struggle over the hegemonic frame for violence and abuse. The extant Canadian research documenting significant sex differences in violence and abuse against adult intimate partners is reviewed.

The ethical demands of settler colonial theory

This article explores the strengths and limitations of settler colonial theory (SCT) as a tool for non-Indigenous scholars seeking to disturb rather than re-enact colonial privilege. Based on an examination of recent Australian academic debates on settler colonialism and the Northern Territory intervention, we argue that SCT is useful in dehistoricizing colonialism, usually presented as an unfortunate but already transcended national past, and in revealing the intimate connections between settler emotions, knowledges, institutions and policies. Most importantly, it makes settler investments visible to settlers, in terms we understand and find hard to escape. However, as others have noted, SCT seems unable to transcend itself, in the sense that it posits a structural inevitability to the settler colonial relationship. We suggest that this structuralism can be mobilized by settler scholars in ways that delegitimize Indigenous resistance and reinforce violent colonial relationships. But while settlers come to stay and to erase Indigenous political existence, this does not mean that these intentions will be realized or must remain fixed. Non-Indigenous scholars should challenge the politically convenient conflation of settler desires and reality, and of the political present and the future. This article highlights these issues in order to begin to unlock the transformative potential of SCT, engaging settler scholars as political actors and arguing that this approach has the potential to facilitate conversations and alliances with Indigenous people. It is precisely by using the strengths of SCT that we can challenge its limitations; the theory itself places ethical demands on us as settlers, including the demand that we actively refuse its potential to re-empower our own academic voices and to marginalize Indigenous resistance.

Police-referred restorative justice for juveniles in Australia

This preliminary paper provides an overview of the legislative and policy context of restorative justice measures for juveniles in each Australian state and territory, highlighting the diverse characteristics of current restorative practices. Further, it provides an indication of the numbers and characteristics of juveniles who are referred by police to restorative justice measures and the offence types for which they are most commonly referred. A number of key points about the application of restorative justice measures to juveniles in Australia’s jurisdictions are highlighted, including that juveniles were referred to conferences primarily for property crimes and that Indigenous juveniles comprised higher proportions of those sent to court than to conferencing. This paper argues that more detailed data on the offending histories, offence types and offence seriousness of juveniles referred by police to restorative justice processes would enable a more finely-grained analysis of restorative justice for juveniles in Australia.

Children's exposure to domestic violence in Australia

Children's 'witnessing' or exposure to domestic violence has been increasingly recognised as a form of child abuse, both in Australia and internationally. Although it is difficult to accurately assess the scope of the problem, research has demonstrated that a substantial amount of domestic violence is witnessed by children. As this paper outlines, witnessing domestic violence can involve a range of incidents, ranging from the child 'only' hearing the violence, to the child being forced to participate in the violence or being used as part of a violent incident. In this paper, current knowledge about the extent of children's exposure to domestic violence in Australia is described, along with the documented impacts that this exposure can have on children. This includes psychological and behavioural impacts, health and socioeconomic impacts, and its link to the intergenerational transmission of violence and re-victimisation. Current legislative and policy initiatives are then described and some community-based programs that have been introduced in Australia to address the problem of children's exposure to domestic violence are highlighted. The paper concludes that initiatives focused on early intervention and holistic approaches to preventing and responding to children's exposure to domestic violence should be considered as part of strategies developed to address this problem.

Taking victims seriously? : the role of victims' rights movements in the emergence of restorative justice

It is widely accepted in the literature on restorative justice that restorative practices emerged at least partly as a result of the recent shift towards recognising the rights of victims of crime, and increasing the involvement of victims in the criminal justice system. This article seeks to destabilise this claim. Although it accepts that there is a relationship between the emergence of a strong victims' rights movement and the emergence of restorative justice, it argues that this relationship is more nuanced, complex and contingent than advocates of restorative justice allow.

Misperceptions about child sex offenders

Sexual offending against children is a highly emotive issue. It is nonetheless important that public policy initiatives to prevent and/or respond to child sexual abuse are based on the available evidence about child sex offenders. This paper addresses five common misperceptions about the perpetrators of sexual offences against children. Specifically, the issues addressed include whether all child sex offenders are ‘paedophiles’, who sexually abuse children, whether most child sex offenders were victims of sexual abuse themselves, rates of recidivism among child sex offenders and the number of children sex offenders typically abuse before they are detected by police. The evidence outlined in this paper highlights that there are few black and white answers to these questions. Perpetrators of sexual crimes against children are not, contrary to widespread opinion, a homogenous group. Rather, there are a number of varied offending profiles that characterise child sex offenders. Gaining an understanding of the nuances of this offender population is critical if children are to be protected from sexual abuse.

Rural masculinities and the internalisation of violence in agricultural communities

This article is based on research we conducted in two agricultural communities as part of a broader study that included mining communities in rural Australia. The data from the agricultural locations tell a different story to that of the mining communities. In the latter, alcohol-fuelled, male-on-male assaults in public places caused considerable anxiety among informants. By contrast, people in the agricultural communities seemed more troubled by hidden violent harms which were largely privatised and individualised, including self-harm, suicide, isolation and threats to men’s general wellbeing and mental health; domestic violence; and other forms of violence largely unreported and thus unacknowledged within the wider community (including sexual assault and bullying linked to homophobia). We argue one reason for the different pattern in the agricultural communities is the decline of pub(lic) masculinity, and with this, the increasing isolation of rural men and the increasing propensity to internalise violence. We argue that the relatively high rates of suicide in agricultural communities experiencing rural decline are symptomatic of the internalisation of violence.

Shadow boxing with an imaginary enemy : a response to "Law and Order Blues"

In our rejoinder to Don Weatherburn's paper,"Law and Order Blues", we do not take issue with his advocacy of the need to take crime seriously and to foster a more rational approach to the problems it poses. Where differences do emerge is (1) with his claim that he is willing to do so whilst we (in our different ways) are not; and (2) on the question of what this involves. Of particular concern is the way in which his argument proceeds by a combination of simple misrepresentation of the positions it seeks to disparage, and silence concerning issues of real substance where intellectual debate and exchange would be welcome and useful. Our paper challenges, in turn, the misrepresentation of Indermaur's analysis of trends in violent crime, the misrepresentation of Hogg and Brown's Rethinking Law and Order, the misrepresentation of the findings of some of the research into the effectiveness of punitive policies and the silence on sexual assault in "Law and Order Blues". We suggest that his silence on sexual assault reflects a more widespread unwillingness to acknowledge the methodological problems that arise in the measurement of crime because such problems severely limit the extent to which confident assertions can be made about prevalence and trends.

Crisis Communication in Natural Disasters : The Queensland Floods and Christchurch Earthquakes

Over the past decade, social media have gone through a process of legitimation and official adoption, and they are now becoming embedded as part of the official communications apparatus of many commercial and public-sector organisations— in turn, providing platforms like Twitter with their own sources of legitimacy. Arguably, the demonstrated utility of social media platforms and tools in times of crisis—from civil unrest and violent crime through to natural disasters like bushfires, earthquakes, and floods—has been a crucial driver of this newfound legitimacy. In the mid-2000s, user-created content and ‘Web 2.0’ platforms were known to play a role in crisis communication; back then, the involvement of extra-institutional actors in providing and sharing information around such events involved distributed, ad hoc, or niche platforms (like Flickr), and was more likely to be framed as ‘citizen journalism’ or ‘crowdsourcing’ (see, for example, Liu, Palen, Sutton, Hughes, & Vieweg, 2008, on the then-emerging role of photo-sharing in disasters). Since then, the dramatically increased take-up of mainstream social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter means that the pool of potential participants in online crisis communication has broadened to include a much larger proportion of the general population, as well as traditional media and official emergency response organisations.

Threat vigilance in child witnesses of domestic violence: a pilot study utilizing the ambiguous situations paradigm

Research has found that children exposed to family violence exhibit higher rates of maladjustment. We review relevant literature on family violence, marital conflict, and cognitive factors implicated in child behaviour problems. A bias toward perceiving threat in ambiguous contexts has been identified as one factor mediating both aggressive and anxious behaviour disorders. We conducted a study utilizing the ambiguous situations paradigm to assess whether children exposed to violent spousal conflict were more likely than children not exposed to violence (divided into children with an externalizing behaviour disorder and non-clinic children) to perceive threat in two classes of ambiguous situations: Peer and Inter-Parental. The results indicated that children exposed to violent spousal conflict perceived more threat in parental situations than either of the other two groups. A number of considerations were taken into account given the exploratory nature of the study, particularly sample limitations. We conclude with suggestions for improvements to the research design and the further relevance of exploring cognitive factors involved in the adjustment of children from backgrounds of violence.

Toward understanding social engineering

There is no doubt that social engineering plays a vital role in compromising most security defenses, and in attacks on people, organizations, companies, or even governments. It is the art of deceiving and tricking people to reveal critical information or to perform an action that benefits the attacker in some way. Fraudulent and deceptive people have been using social engineering traps and tactics using information technology such as e-mails, social networks, web sites, and applications to trick victims into obeying them, accepting threats, and falling victim to various crimes and attacks such as phishing, sexual abuse, financial abuse, identity theft, impersonation, physical crime, and many other forms of attack. Although organizations, researchers, practitioners, and lawyers recognize the severe risk of social engineering-based threats, there is a severe lack of understanding and controlling of such threats. One side of the problem is perhaps the unclear concept of social engineering as well as the complexity of understand human behaviors in behaving toward, approaching, accepting, and failing to recognize threats or the deception behind them. The aim of this paper is to explain the definition of social engineering based on the related theories of the many related disciplines such as psychology, sociology, information technology, marketing, and behaviourism. We hope, by this work, to help researchers, practitioners, lawyers, and other decision makers to get a fuller picture of social engineering and, therefore, to open new directions of collaboration toward detecting and controlling it.

Shadow boxing with an imaginary enemy : a response to “law and order blues”

In our rejoinder to Don Weatherburn's paper, “Law and Order Blues”, we do not take issue with his advocacy of the need to take crime seriously and to foster a more rational approach to the problems it poses. Where differences do emerge is (1) with his claim that he is willing to do so whilst we (in our different ways) are not; and (2) on the question of what this involves. Of particular concern is the way in which his argument proceeds by a combination of simple misrepresentation of the positions it seeks to disparage, and silence concerning issues of real substance where intellectual debate and exchange would be welcome and useful. Our paper challenges, in turn, the misrepresentation of Indermaur's analysis of trends in violent crime, the misrepresentation of Hogg and Brown's Rethinking Law and Order, the misrepresentation of the findings of some of the research into the effectiveness of punitive policies and the silence on sexual assault in “Law and Order Blues”. We suggest that his silence on sexual assault reflects a more widespread unwillingness to acknowledge the methodological problems that arise in the measurement of crime because such problems severely limit the extent to which confident assertions can be made about prevalence and trends.

An Asian perspective of occupational stress coping model : a case study of Sri Lankan employees

Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of natural disasters and violent conflicts in the world. Yet there is a lack of research on its unique socio-cultural characteristics that determine an individual's cognitive and behavioural responses to distressing encounters. This study extends Goh, Sawang and Oei's (2010) revised transactional model to examine the cognitive and behavioural processes of occupational stress experience in the collectivistic society of Sri Lanka. A time series survey was used to measure the participant's stress-coping process. Using the revised transactional model and path analysis, a unique Sri Lankan model is identified that provides theoretical insights on the revised transactional model, and sheds light on socio-cultural dimensions of occupational stress and coping, thus equipping practitioners with a sound theoretical basis for the development of stress management programs in the workplace.

Violence in and around entertainment districts : a longitudinal analysis of the impact of late-night lockout legislation

Violence in entertainment districts is a major problem across urban landscapes throughout the world. Research shows that licensed premises are the third most common location for homicides and serious assaults, accounting for one in ten fatal and nonfatal assaults. One class of interventions that aims to reduce violence in entertainment districts involves the use of civil remedies: a group of strategies that use civil or regulatory measures as legal “levers” to reduce problem behavior. One specific civil remedy used to reduce problematic behavior in entertainment districts involves manipulation of licensed premise trading hours. This article uses generalized linear models to analyze the impact of lockout legislation on recorded violent offences in two entertainment districts in the Australian state of Queensland. Our research shows that 3 a.m. lockout legislation led to a direct and significant reduction in the number of violent incidents inside licensed premises. Indeed, the lockouts cut the level of violent crime inside licensed premises by half. Despite these impressive results for the control of violence inside licensed premises, we found no evidence that the lockout had any impact on violence on streets and footpaths outside licensed premises that were the site for more than 80 percent of entertainment district violence. Overall, however, our analysis suggests that lockouts are an important mechanism that helps to control the level of violence inside licensed premises but that finely grained contextual responses to alcohol-related problems are needed rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.

Leadership in problem-oriented policing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in problem-oriented policing (POP). Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses interrupted time series models to isolate the impact on crime trends of a transformational leader's efforts to spearhead the implementation of a program of POP, called the problem solving model (PSM), in a southern state in Australia. Findings – This paper finds that the PSM led directly to an impact on overall crime, with a significant reduction in crimes per 100,000 persons per year after the introduction of the PSM. The majority of the overall crime drop attributable to implementation of POP was driven by reductions in property crime. It was noted that the leadership influence of the PSM was not effective in reducing all types of crime. Crimes against the person where not affected by the introduction of the PSM and public nuisance crimes largely followed the forecasted, upward trajectory. Practical implications – The driver behind the PSM was Commissioner Hyde and the success of the PSM is largely attributable to his strong commitment to transformational leadership and a top-down approach to implementation. These qualities encapsulate the original ideas behind POP that Goldstein (1979, 2003), back in 1979, highlighted as critical for the success of future POP programs. Social implications – Reducing crime is an important part of creating safe communities and improving quality of life for all citizens. This research shows that successful implementation of the PSM within South Australia under the strong leadership of Commissioner Hyde was a major factor in reducing property crime and overall crime rates. Originality/value – This paper is valuable because it demonstrates the link between strong leadership in policing, the commissioner's vision for POP and how his vision then translated into widespread adoption of POP. The study empirically shows that the statewide adoption of POP led to significant reductions in crime, particularly property crime.