Human rights and youth justice reform in England and Wales: A systemic analysis

This article examines critically the persistently antagonistic relationship – across the past quarter-century – between the provisions of international human rights instruments and the nature and direction of youth justice reform in England and Wales. It introduces the core provisions of the human rights framework that pertain to youth justice and it sketches the nature and direction of policy reform over the 25-year period under scrutiny (1991–2016). To obtain a comprehensive sense of the relationship between human rights and youth justice reform in the jurisdiction, it applies a detailed systemic analysis; beginning at the point at which criminal responsibility is formally imputed and progressing through each stage of the youth justice system, up to the point where the child might ultimately be deprived of her/his liberty. By taking a ‘long-view’ of youth justice reform and by adopting a systemic end-to-end analysis of the human rights–youth justice interface, the article presents an analytical account of both change (policy reforms) and continuity (the enduring nature of human rights violations)

Juvenile Justice, Young People and Human Rights in Australia

This article identifies the key human rights issues that emerge for young people in juvenile justice in Australia. While there is a clear framework for respecting the human rights of children within juvenile justice, the article poses the question: To what extent does Australia actually operationalise and comply with these rights in law, policy and practice? In answering, it discusses various national and international reports, legislation, academic and other research and litigation on behalf of children. It identifies substantive and procedural human rights violations affecting young people in juvenile justice, many of which fall disproportionately on two over-represented groups: Indigenous young people, and those with mental health disorders and cognitive disability. While there are review and compliance mechanisms in place, respect for young people's rights within the broad area of juvenile justice remains problematic

‘It's all about the Benjamins’: Infringement notices and young people in New South Wales

© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017. This article provides a brief analysis of the place, role and purpose of monetary penalties and their theoretical underpinnings. Against this critique of financial penalties and the revenue ('the Benjamins')1 that flows from penalty infringement notices, the article examines the six-fold growth in penalty infringement notices2 issued to children and young people in NSW between 1998 and 2013. It outlines the disproportionate impact of monetary penalties on them and the increasing displacement of diversionary options, raising questions about the appropriateness of issuing infringement notices to children and young people. This article also addresses positive developments in relation to children and young people, including the introduction of Work and Development Orders (WDOs) in NSW

Rethinking community sanctions: Social justice and penal control

Rethinking Community Sanctions: Social Justice and Penal Control redresses the invisibility of community sanctions in a popular imaginary dominated by the prison, resulting in their being seen as 'not prison', 'not punishment', a 'let off', or expression of mercy. Based on insights from interviews with key participants in 3 Australian jurisdictions, case studies of selected programmes and policies, and the international literature, the authors focus on the effects of community sanctions among groups vulnerable to penal control: First Nations peoples, women, and those with disabilities, along with those at the intersections of these groups. Arguing that developing a better, more democratic politics around community sanctions requires coming to terms with the wider carceral web in which vulnerable groups are ensnared, they demonstrate the importance of connecting criminal legal system struggles with broader movements for community control, self-determination, and sovereignty

In search of hair damage using metabolomics?

YesHair fibres are extraordinary materials, not least because they are exquisitely formed by each of the 5 million or so hair follicles on our bodies and have functions that cross from physiology to psychology, but also because they have well known resistance to degradation as seen in hair surviving from archaeological and historical samples [1]. Hair fibres on the head grow at around 1cm each month, together totalling approximately 12km of growth per person per year. Each fibre is incredibly strong for its small diameter; with one fibre typically holding 100g and together a well-formed ponytail [allegedly] has the collective strength to support the weight of a small elephant! Hair – and from here I mean scalp hair – is under constant scrutiny by each of us; whether it be style, split ends, the first few grey hairs or the collection of hairs in the shower that should be firmly attached - leading to the fear that is hair loss

Indigenous family violence : an attempt to understand the problems and inform appropriate and effective responses to criminal justice system intervention

Whilst high levels of concern about the prevalence of family violence within Indigenous communities have long been expressed, progress in the development of evidence-based intervention programs for known perpetrators has been slow. This review of the literature aims to provide a resource for practitioners who work in this area, and a framework from within which culturally specific violence prevention programs can be developed and delivered. It is suggested that effective responses to Indigenous family violence need to be informed by culturally informed models of violence, and that significant work is needed to develop interventions that successfully manage the risk of perpetrators of family violence committing further offences.<br /

The troublesome ticks research protocol: Developing a comprehensive, multidiscipline research plan for investigating human tick-associated disease in Australia

In Australia, there is a paucity of data about the extent and impact of zoonotic tick-related illnesses. Even less is understood about a multifaceted illness referred to as Debilitating Symptom Complexes Attributed to Ticks (DSCATT). Here, we describe a research plan for investigating the aetiology, pathophysiology, and clinical outcomes of human tick-associated disease in Australia. Our approach focuses on the transmission of potential pathogens and the immunological responses of the patient after a tick bite. The protocol is strengthened by prospective data collection, the recruitment of two external matched control groups, and sophisticated integrative data analysis which, collectively, will allow the robust demonstration of associations between a tick bite and the development of clinical and pathological abnormalities. Various laboratory analyses are performed including metagenomics to investigate the potential transmission of bacteria, protozoa and/or viruses during tick bite. In addition, multi-omics technology is applied to investigate links between host immune responses and potential infectious and non-infectious disease causations. Psychometric profiling is also used to investigate whether psychological attributes influence symptom development. This research will fill important knowledge gaps about tick-borne diseases. Ultimately, we hope the results will promote improved diagnostic outcomes, and inform the safe management and treatment of patients bitten by ticks in Australia

The ‘Great Decarceration’: Historical Trends and Future Possibilities

During the 19th Century, hundreds of thousands of people were caught up in what Foucault famously referred to as the ‘great confinement’, or ‘great incarceration’, spanning reformatories, prisons, asylums, and more. Levels of institutional incarceration increased dramatically across many parts of Europe and the wider world through the expansion of provision for those defined as socially marginal, deviant, or destitute. While this trend has been the focus of many historical studies, much less attention has been paid to the dynamics of ‘the great decarceration’ that followed for much of the early‐ to mid‐20th Century. This article opens with an overview of these early decarceration trends in the English adult and youth justice systems and suggests why these came to an end from the 1940s onwards. It then explores parallels with marked decarceration trends today, notably in youth justice, and suggests how these might be expedited, extended, and protected

Geographies of landscape: Representation, power and meaning

Green criminology has sought to blur the nature-culture binary and this article seeks to extend recent work by geographers writing on landscape to further our understanding of the shifting contours of the divide. The article begins by setting out these different approaches, before addressing how dynamics of surveillance and conquest are embedded in landscape photography. It then describes how the ways we visualize the Earth were reconfigured with the emergence of photography in the 19th century and how the world itself has been transformed into a target in our global media culture

Governing Young People: coherence and contradiction in contemporary youth justice

This article explores the burgeoning literature on modes and layers of governance and applies it to the complex of contemporary youth justice reform. Globalized neo-liberal processes of responsibilization and risk management coupled with traditional neo-conservative authoritarian strategies have dominated the political landscape. However, they also have to work alongside or within ‘new’ conceptions of social inclusion, partnership, restoration and moralization. These apparently contradictory strategies open up the possibility of multiple localized translations rather than an often assumed dominance of a uniform ‘culture of control’. The ensuing hybridity also suggests that any coherence within contemporary youth justice relies on continual negotiations between opposing, yet overlapping, discursive practices