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Common depictions of buying and selling illicit drugs online centre on how drug market actors engage in dark web drug cryptomarkets, but the supply of illicit drugs also takes place in ‘plain site’ on the surface web. Drawing on netnographic observations and qualitative interviews with hard-to-reach buyers and vendors (n = 20), this paper explores LeafedOut, a specific, popular surface web platform, that provides a conduit for local cannabis exchanges. We found that the platform enabled easy access and supply at the local level but increased some specific risks to those involved. Actors neutralised the perceived risks of drug supply over this surface web platform through the broader societal normalisation of cannabis use/supply, adopting encrypted messaging applications to cover ‘digital traces’, and developing various methods to establish trust with an exchange partner (e.g. review systems, sending selfies with drug paraphernalia, selectively choosing meet-up locations). This paper expands our understanding of the growing number of online illicit drug markets by shifting attention from dark web cryptomarkets to the much more widely accessed surface/clear web. Theoretical implications for the study of trust and risk in online illicit drug market exchanges are also considered.

While social marketers typically research and practice on topics such as homelessness, obesity and domestic violence, the negative framing of these social issues can undermine and restrict the solutions that can be designed. There is significant evidence to demonstrate that a strengths-based rather deficit approach to social issue framing is more effective; however, there is little guidance on how to move from negative framing of a social issue (deficit-approach) to positive framing of a social issue (strengths-based). Using service design and reflexivity, this research involved a cross-discipline team of 15 researchers, 15 expert-proxies and women of lived experience, 11 early responders and 13 user-testers to co-design a digital portal prototype to prevent homelessness for mature women. The findings identified four project features that require focus for a strengths-based approach. This research also developed a checklist for reframing a social issue as positive using a strength-based approach.

The legal framework associated with disaster risk reduction involves a complex network of laws and policies, which prescribe roles for federal, state and local governments as well as specifying responsibilities for a range of actors involved in disaster recovery. This research applies Carol Baachi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) method of discourse analysis, to examine the way that disasters have been problematised within Queensland law. The Baachi method provides for a deeper understanding of the limits of solutions that have been created by legislation and policy, while also uncovering assumptions underpinning various legislative documents and frameworks. This analysis found that the Queensland disaster legislative framework: 1) defines disasters as short-term crises/emergencies; 2) prioritises the need to develop technological capacity to predict and understand disaster risk; 3) frames disasters as logistical problems; and 4) locates the solution to disaster in building ‘resilience’. The assumptions underlying this framing are that: once physical infrastructure is rebuilt and services restored, the disaster response is complete; disaster recovery therefore equates to a recovery of economic losses, with a preference for losses central to restarting the economy of the area; people who suffer disaster are of financial means (typically home-owners with adequate insurance); and the charity sector and/or volunteers will provide assistance to supplement state responses (despite their under-resourcing to undertake such activities). This analysis found the following gaps and silences in the Queensland disaster legislative framework: disaster loss extends beyond economic losses and damage to infrastructure; the impacts of disaster persist for a long time after the initial response and recovery effort physically concludes; volunteers are impacted by the trauma experienced during recovery processes; there is a documented risk increased of gender-based violenc

Gender violence is one of the greatest challenges to peace and security in Pacific Island Countries. The persistence of this problem is often linked to the limits of state-based policing authority. It is argued that this approach fails to grapple adequately with hybrid systems of regulatory authority in Pacific Island Countries that include customary and faith-based forms of authority. Feminist inquiry into the difficulties Pacific women face in securing justice when they are the victims of gendered crimes frequently highlights the gendered failings of state and customary systems of justice, finding that both systems reflect and further entrench the subordinated status of women. This paper addresses the tension between the apparent limits of state-centred models of policing and the shortfalls of hybridised structures of regulatory authority. It reports a theoretically informed empirical study that investigated how ni-Vanuatu women understand gender violence and the role that police can play in its prevention. Using participant research and photo elicitation surveys, we asked 1) how does the authority of policing agencies operate when addressing violence against women in relation to other sites of international and local sociocultural authority in the Vanuatu context, and 2) how do women understand and value policing authority relative to other sites of regulatory authority? We found that, while police in Vanuatu operate in the context of constructive complementarity with other forms of authority, women valued police, identifying them as the key source of regulatory authority that could provide help if their partner became violent or if they were threatened.

Equal access to safe transport is increasingly conceptualised as a fundamental right for women, with demonstrated effects on health outcomes, social and economic mobility and societal participation. This study analysed qualitative and quantitative data to examine travel patterns and experiences among 200 women (aged between 18-64 years) using paid transport for work or educational purposes in Bangladesh. The results showed that the women faced multiple threats to their safety, including gender-based violence, harassment and crime, and traffic and non-traffic injuries, and that the use of paid transport was associated with high levels of anxiety and fear. Despite these circumstances, the women were captive travellers, forced to make transport choices based on price, availability and ease of travel rather than safety. Unable to choose safe transport, the women attempted to mitigate risks by changing their travel patterns and behaviour and by restricting their travel frequency. These findings are discussed within the context of women's rights and mobility justice.

In Australia, threshold quantities of illicit drugs act as an indicator of supply offences in distinguishing traffickers from users. This is problematic because it can be difficult for the courts to discriminate between heavy users or ‘social suppliers’ and ‘dealers proper’. Currently, there is no systematic analysis of how the judiciary in Australia navigate the relationship between different types of supply and the consistency and proportionality of the sentence applied. This analysis maps out how current sentencing practices respond to offenders involved in ‘social supply’ and ‘minimally commercial supply’ who are charged with drug trafficking. It makes recommendations that could inform future drug law reform, including that review is needed of the system of thresholds, that sentencing objectives of general and specific deterrence be reconsidered in cases of social supply and minimally commercial supply, and that consideration be given to expanding the scope of current diversion programs to accommodate the needs of the types of offenders and offending behaviour addressed in this study.

Scholars have been critical of the gender biased nature of policing, and its effects on service delivery. They highlight how law enforcement is male dominated, and how this impacts negatively on women as offenders and victims of crime. Such criticisms have mobilised international and national institutional support for more gender equitable representation in policing agencies. A growing body of research has addressed the impact of increasing the numbers of women police, and how this might lead to more sympathetic and less gender prejudicial policing. This paper reports on a study commissioned by the Tuvalu Police Service that explored public perceptions of service delivery. Our analysis spotlights perceptions about women in policing, attitudes in relation to preferred officer-gender in calls for service and views on increasing the number of women employed as police. The findings identified clear support for increasing the number of women police, but ambiguous sentiments in relation to the types of roles female officers could perform. Closer analysis of qualitative data, however, revealed an appreciation of the strengths of women police who, in a context characterised by regulatory pluralism, were able to address the needs of female victims and offenders in ways that male officers could not.

Mature women in Australia are one of the fastest-growing groups at risk of homelessness (ABS, 2018). This project sought to better understand why this phenomenon is occurring and how it might be prevented. The Women’s Butterfly Project (WBP) has created a high-tech/high-touch approach to preventing homelessness before the risk becomes significant through strategic partnerships with early responders and the application of appropriate high-touch communication materials and a high-tech portal.

In 2020-2021, the QUT-led team commenced working on the project titled High tech vs high touch support: Preventing homelessness for mature women. The aim of the overall project was to reduce the number of mature women, age 55+ falling into homelessness through early intervention and education, delivered via high touch (early responder) or high-tech solutions. According to the health continuum of prevention, three stages of harm prevention exist: primary (prevent the harm occurring), secondary (attempt to stop existing harm early), and tertiary (attempt to reduce the impact of established harm). While there are some excellent compendium-style resources available, these resources tend to focus on women in the secondary or tertiary points of intervention (at the ‘tipping point’ or already in crisis, respectively). Other resources such as helplines or access to emergency housing are also targeted to women already experiencing a crisis. We aim to help women at the primary stage – women who have a low or non-existent level of awareness of their risk of homelessness, and so are not cognisant of the need to seek support. This project aims to empower mature women (aged 55+) to maintain secure housing when experiencing a change of circumstance, by equipping non-traditional early responders (a professional source of support who is not directly associated with homeless services) for conversations and support with mature women. We aim to combine high touch approaches (conversations) with high tech flexibility (digital support) through a digital hub for women and a toolkit for early responders. This project has involved co-design with mature women with lived experience of homelessness and expert proxies who work with women who have experienced homelessness.

This special issue is the product of a workshop on innovations in policing and preventing gender violence in the Global South, hosted by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Centre for Justice 3-4 December 2019. The event was attended by scholars from Brazil, Pacific Island communities, Bangladesh, Argentina, and several Australian jurisdictions. Hence the articles in this special issue reflect the diverse nationalities present at the event. A central aim of the workshop realised in this special issue is the stimulation of innovation in understanding the policing and prevention of gender violence through novel international collaborations and cross-fertilization. It reverses the assumptions that underpin the epistemic injustice of the social sciences, that innovations generally flow only from the Global North to the Global South. This special issue shows that it can be the other way round.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a global policy issue with significant social, economic and personal consequences. The burden of violence against women and girls is distributed unequally, with rates of gender violence significantly higher in low to middle income countries of the Global South. Yet the bulk of global research on gender violence is based on the experiences of urban communities in high-income English-speaking countries mainly from the Global North. This body of research typically takes the experience of women from Anglophone countries as the norm from which to theorise and frame theories and research of gender-based violence. Our chapter problematises theories that the privilege women in the Global North as the empirical referents of ‘everyday violence’ (Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo, 2016). At the same time however it is important to resist homogenisng the violence experienced by women across diverse societies in the global south. This orientalist vision of oppressed subaltern Southern women is directly contrasted with an ideal rights bearing feminine subject from the Anglophone countries of the global north (Mohanty, 2012). This binary discourse exaggerates the differences and obfuscates the similarities of VAWG across Northern and Southern borders and reproduces images of women in the Global South as unfortunate victims of ‘other’ cultures (Durham, 2015; Narayan, 1997). This chapter contrasts three examples, the policing of family violence in Indigenous communities in Australia; Image Based Abuse in Singapore; and the policing of gender violence in the Pacific as a way of concretising the argument.

Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus, we instead conceive drug market exchanges as complex assemblages, noting how exchanges are reconstructed in online spaces, and technological affordances may facilitate elements of rationality in drug exchanges. Adopting these notions allows us to argue that aspects of rationality can potentially contribute to an understanding of exchange practices in online markets, and that online channels can afford assumptions of utility-maximization, rich market information to guide decision-making, and anonymity in the exchange. In addition, consideration is given to the structural variability of online illicit drug markets, and that the affordance of rationality should be considered across a spectrum of applicability that takes into account the specifics of each dimension of online drug market (i.e. drug cryptomarkets, illicit online pharmacies, and “app-based” drug markets).

The criminalisation of domestic violence during the 1970s and 1980s was lauded by feminists as a victory, as the state taking responsibility for the safety of women. The problem was that its regulation was delegated to a masculinist judicial system and its policing delegated to a militarised and masculinised police service that left victims disappointed, re-victimised or disbelieved. Our paper investigates how to re-imagine the policing of victims/survivors of gender-based violence from a women-centred perspective. Drawing on secondary and primary empirical research on women's police stations (WPS), that first emerged in Brasil in 1985 and Argentina in 1988, this paper investigates whether this model could offer an innovative remedy to the masculinised ill-equipped traditional models of policing of gender-based violence. Framed by southern theory our project reverses the notion that knowledge/policy transfer should flow from the Anglophone countries of the Global-North to the Global-South. Our project aimed to discover, firstly, how women's police stations – a unique invention of the Global-South, respond to and prevent gender-based violence and, secondly, what aspects could inform the development of new approaches to policing and prevention of gender-based violence elsewhere in the world. We conclude that this uniquely South American innovation might serve as an inspiration to Australia and elsewhere in the world struggling with the shadow pandemic of gender violence. Our paper draws on original empirical and historical research undertaken in Brasil, Argentina and Australia to offer new practical and conceptual insights into how to enhance the policing of gender-based violence.

The rapidly-accelerating integration of artificial intelligence into our lives will soon affect court rooms and other legal environments in Australia. This will occur so quickly and so soon that critical threshold issues for a smooth integration of AI into court environments remain unexamined. In particular, the psychological- and attitudinal-readiness of the judiciary to work with algorithmic tools is in question. Further, the literature is silent as to the degree to which judicial decision-makers are open or resistant to the fettering of their discretion by inscrutable AI systems. This distinct gap means that we do not yet know (1) whether Australian judges understand AI, (2) whether they trust it, (3) whether they appreciate its potentials and risks or what might influence their attitudes, (4) whether they are aware of the differences between automated and augmented decision making, and (5) what accountability and oversight mechanisms will be required. This paper considers the likely barriers and risks to a successful integration of AI into the work of judges in Australia, based on research and experience in other jurisdictions – mainly the United States, where algorithms already play a significant role in facilitating judicial-decision making.

This is the first study to explore how cryptomarket actors are increasingly adopting encrypted messaging applications to “direct deal” beyond the provided platforms, to obviate the protocols of cryptomarkets, and to diversify the communication experience of drug buying via the dark net. Drawing on 965 forum posts discussing encrypted messaging applications, results showed that direct dealing may be more likely to occur in the context of preestablished trust between vendors and buyers, during instances of law enforcement crackdowns, and when buyers are enticed by discounts or promotions. Our findings also suggested a general hesitancy toward direct dealing, as it was often associated with greater exposure to scams, and perceptions that direct dealing increases the risks concerning personal security and detection from law enforcement. These findings provide insight into the interconnection of online drug markets, and how actors make decisions to drift between multichannel supply points mediated by perceptions of trust and risk.