Legal Services and Neo-Liberalism in an Unequal Legal Order

In 1975 the landmark ‘Law and Poverty in Australia’ report (Sackville 1975a) sought to ensure substantive rather than formal equality before the law for all Australians. A fundamental aspect of its proposals was an extensive and innovative legal aid system with expanded public funding, with greater assistance in both conventional and new areas of legal need seen as a key in overcoming social disadvantage. By the 21st Century, the focus had shifted further away from the goal of substantive legal equality for all to the principle goal of cost efficiency. This paper details and analyses aspects of the historical shift from viewing legal needs as an issue of state welfare to a neo-liberal mode of governance in this sphere of policy, and the divided responses to these changes. It also considers the results for legal representation in criminal matters and the legal needs of indigenous Australians

Felon Fights: Masculinity, Spectacle and Suffering

Felony Fights is a website and set of DVDs depicting ‘no rules’ combat between male former convicts and a range of opponents. In these, the spectacle of violence serves to obscure the profoundly unequal relations of power that shape their production and viewing appeal. In Felony Fights, embodied marginality and poverty are presented as evidence of the animal brutality and the carceral character of the fighters. This resonates with populist explanations for criminality and male violence, and the punitive sentiments that are linked to law and order thinking about the failure of the penal system to adequately punish and inflict suffering on dangerous criminals.Sydney Institute of Criminology; School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydne

The experience of safety, harassment and social exclusion among male clients of Sydney's medically supervised injecting centre

Research on drug harm reduction services has found these operate as a safe haven from health harm. Less is known about the wider sense of security experienced by clients of such services as a counterbalance to social marginality in their daily lives. As part of a larger study of the experience of violence among Australian men, the authors completed 20 qualitative semi-structured interviews with male clients of Sydney's Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in 2016-2020. These were conducted anonymously in a private clinical room inside the MSIC and focused on aspects of drug use and general life experiences of violence, law enforcement, safety and security. Interviews were analysed by thematic content through a combination of preliminary and second close readings. Our analysis found that the MSIC consistently acted as a reprieve from harassment and violence from police and members of the public, conflict in drug deals, and general social exclusion

Patron offending and intoxication in night time entertainment districts (POINTED) : a study protocol

Risky alcohol consumption is the subject of considerable community concern in Australia and internationally, particularly the risky drinking practices of young people consuming alcohol in the night-time economy. This study will determine some of the factors and correlates associated with alcohol-related risk-taking, offending and harm in and around licensed venues and night-time entertainment precincts across five Australian cities (three metropolitan and two regional). The primary aim of the study is to measure levels of pre-drinking, drinking in venues, intoxication, illicit drug use and potentially harmful drinking practices (such as mixing with energy drinks) of patrons in entertainment areas, and relating this to offending, risky behaviour and harms experienced. The study will also investigate the effects of license type, trading hours, duration of drinking episodes and geographical location on intoxication, offending, risk-taking and experience of harm. Data collection involves patron interviews (incorporating breathalysing and drug testing) with 7500 people attending licensed venues. Intensive venue observations (n=112) will also be undertaken in a range of venues, including pubs, bars and nightclubs. The information gathered through this study will inform prevention and enforcement approaches of policy makers, police and venue staff.<br /

"He had to be a poofter or something": violence, male honour and heterosexual panic

On the thirtieth of June in 1993, Kevin Marsh, a sixty-year-old invalid pensioner who lived alone in public housing in the Wollongong district of New South Wales, was sitting on the balcony of his modest home. T, a local seventeen year old who had been drinking with a friend, walked past and spoke to him. Marsh gave him a smoke and invited him inside to share some drinks. The pair may have been drinking for as little as twenty minutes, when an alleged sexual pass by Marsh resulted in a physical confrontation and his violent death

Boozers and bouncers: masculine conflict, disengagement and the contemporary governance of drinking-related violence and disorder

The links between crime, violence and male offending are now more deeply researched in a growing international literature that understands much antisocial and criminal behaviour as a social resource for the attainment and protection of masculine identities. Nevertheless, the tie between masculinity and nonoffending has been much less explored.This focus group study of understandings of public drinking-related conflict and violence among young male drinkers and security officers in a combined urban and rural district of New South Wales illustrates the significance and complexity of these links. Masculine concerns inform a readiness for involvement with conflict and its enjoyment through the prominence of issues of social status, gender policing, honour and carnival during different social occasions. But this must be understood in relation to the different masculinity 'projects' (Connell, 1995) that contrast security officers with an idealised professional self-image and the majority of drinkers, from a more violent minority. A surprisingly common pattern of 'respectable' masculine subjectivity informs disengagement from serious violence. This is often characterised by an exaggerated view of the rational male self as safe and in control of most social interaction in dangerous public contexts.The pitfalls of this may even be enhanced by the new influence of campaigns around 'risky' public drinking that aim to instill ideals of responsible self-governance

A dangerous proximity: the night-time economy and the city’s early morning

In most human cultures the night has been associated with forms of danger or evil, and the breakdown of feudalism and rise of urban industrial capitalism reflected these concerns in new ways

Youth violence & the limits of moral panic

The recent trend towards dismissing the concerns about youth violence as simply expressions of "moral panic" and not supported by statistical data, overlooks the many unreported and unrecorded acts of violence, often occurring in alcohol-related se ttings, in which the victims are frequently young males. These acts of violence, argues STEPHEN TOMSEN, are deserving of greater attention, both to understand their cause and to protect the victims

Introduction

Male offenders carry out the great majority of crimes. Although criminal justice agencies focus heavily on detecting, prosecuting and punishing the offending of working-class, poor and minority males, it is apparent that high levels of recorded and reported offending reflect a real and pervasive social phenomenon of disproportionate male criminality. The reasons for this have been a puzzle for researchers, officials and commentators. Since its origins at the end of the 1800s, criminology has had ongoing difficulty explaining the link between masculinity and crime. Much traditional criminological discourse had a close concern with the study and control of 'dangerous' forms of masculinity, particularly working-class delinquency, but did not tackle the relation between criminality and the socially varied attainment of male status and power

Boozers and bouncers : masculine conflict, disengagement and the contemporary governance of drinking-related violence and disorder

The links between crime, violence and male offending are now more deeply researched in a growing international literature that understands much antisocial and criminal behaviour as a social resource for the attainment and protection of masculine identities. Nevertheless, the tie between masculinity and nonoffending has been much less explored. This focus group study of understandings of public drinking-related conflict and violence among young male drinkers and security officers in a combined urban and rural district of New South Wales illustrates the significance and complexity of these links. Masculine concerns inform a readiness for involvement with conflict and its enjoyment through the prominence of issues of social status, gender policing, honour and carnival during different masculinity 'projects' (Connell, 1995) that contrast security officers with an idealised professional self-image and the majority of drinkers, from a more violent minority. A surprisingly common pattern of 'respectable' masculine subjectivity informs disengagement from serious violence. This is often characterised by an exaggerated view of the rational male self as safe and in control of most social interaction in dangerous public contexts. The pitfalls of this may even be enhanced by the new influence of campaigns around 'risky' public drinking that aim to instill ideals of responsible self-governance