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Systemic gendered violence at the borders of the Global North is perpetrated by state actors and their proxies, and yet remains underdiscussed. This article presents numerous cases of such violence to argue that it is not random, does not occur in a vacuum or at the whim of wayward officers. Rather, this gendered state violence is the expression of a patriarchal and hegemonic state that positions the woman at the border as out of place. Deploying performative theories, this article unmasks the masculine agenda enacted at the border to reveal that its violent exhibition of power serves many purposes.

The rise of the humanitarian narrative in relation to modern slavery has enabled corporations to profit from large-scale human exploitation with public consensus. Nation-states have legislated on modern slavery on the premise of protection, which has led to the entities involved evading or being exempt from responsibility for such practices by working with their suppliers to combat such practices despite evidence that their supply chains are linked to, or create further, vulnerability for workers. Other third parties praise such mechanism as transparent, reinforcing a moral consensus that is proving difficult to critique. By using the case study of the manufacture and import to Australia of medical gloves, this article unveils the perverseness of the moral, benevolent state-corporation narrative.

The histories of immigration control in Britain and Australia in the twentieth century are often contrasted, with Britain imposing few formal restrictions on Commonwealth migration until the 1960s ...

This intervention considers the potential for ‘hope’ to act as an analytical tool to examine mobility, precariousness and the quest for security in the context of migrants’ exploitation, or...

Collaborative research projects with service providers and their clients are becoming increasingly important for capturing a more comprehensive understanding of criminological matters. This article...

While considerable literature has explored the complex nature of victimisation, few empirical studies have examined the role of alcohol and other drugs (AODs) in victims’ experiences, specifically victims’ self-medication using AODs and its impact on ongoing health and welfare needs. Addressing the dearth of empirical research on the nature and extent of victims’ self-medication, and drawing upon quantitative data from a survey ( n = 102) of victims from Adelaide, South Australia this article explores individuals’ experiences of victimisation and AOD use against type of victimisation, type of peer support network and type of consumption. The findings indicate support for the self-medication for trauma hypothesis, namely that victimisation is positively associated with considerable increase in AOD consumption. On the other hand, there is a lack of support for the supplementary hypothesis that network support is associated with victimisation/re-victimisation. The authors demonstrate that further empirical work is needed to deepen understanding of victims’ AOD use and expedite the development of evidence-based policy and support frameworks.

This chapter examines the statutory powers of border migration officers in Australia with an emphasis on the coercive power exerted via the external body search (strip search) and internal body search (cavity search) of regular migrants. The chapter argues that the securitisation narrative allows the body to be positioned as the truth-definer. The body becomes a site of proof and trust, while documentation and oral explanation are deemed insufficient for revealing the truth, even when documents evidence belonging through citizenship. In this context, immigration officers are ‘border truth producers’ and the suspect community’s ‘non-white body’ is the main target. The Australian legislation underpinning external and internal body searches is compared to the equivalent US regime to highlight the need for checks and balances in the Australian context. This requirement for more balanced statutory powers is justified by the lack of an evidence-based approach and the secrecy surrounding the border control regime, eroding de facto the existing protection of human rights. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the digitalisation of body searches via new technology, such as body scanners. It is claimed that such a procedure normalises the search for truth in/on the body, rendering anyone a member of the suspect community.

Author version made available in accordance with publisher copyright policy., “Black market” counterfeiters operating outside of authorised industry are often framed as the perpetrators of dangerous and defective medicines within legal pharmaceutical markets. However the assumption that all medicines which deliberately violate regulatory standards and quality specifications have black market origins is ill conceived, as poor medicine quality can occur regardless of who the manufacturer of the medicine may be. This paper proposes a reframing of all pharmaceutical products which intentionally, or negligently, fail to comply with regulatory standards and which are then fraudulently depicted as being of standard, from “counterfeit” to “fraudulent medicines”. This proposal is reinforced with examples from Australian law, where Australian pharmaceutical companies, who deliberately violated regulatory standards and produced defective and dangerous medicines, have been prosecuted using legislation designed to capture poor-quality, counterfeit drugs. The paper argues that these corporate crimes should not be framed as “counterfeiting” but as “frauds”, thus containing acts of “counterfeiting” to existing intellectual property (IP) law and providing due recognition for all acts which defraud and cause harm to the consumer.

In the final chapter, we reflect on the overall project and make some observations with regard to chance and justice. We began this study with a set of methodological tools to confirm the direct link between trauma and an increase in alcohol and other drug self-medication, as per the existing literature. As the study progressed, we became aware that we were listening to unique narrative accounts that represent differing qualities of introspection and reflection, suggesting that respondents were positioning their narrative identity in relation to the trauma event. We re-calibred our understanding and approach with the aim to ‘do justice’ to these narrative accounts, developing the view that it would be informative to analyse victim-survivor reflections on self-medication, support-seeking and the post-trauma journey, with meaning work an important qualifier. This led us to a consideration of validation and chance in relation to justice. The relationship between institutional exigencies and values and the victim-survivor’s connection with formal networks inclusive of validation is a matter of great interest and copious victimology research. For the victim, justice is a process that acknowledges and validates the fact of a wrong occurring. This is distinguished from other informal remedies—both individual and social. The redundancies built into political and administrative criminal justice systems mean that, for defendants, the outcome is never certain. Hence, the victim, who is unwilling to risk invalidation, is far too often left nursing a festering wound.

The research underpinning this book is based on a survey of crime victims and their behaviours in relation to self-medication (N = 102), qualitative follow-up interviews (N = 15) and focus groups with counsellors (N = 2). The collaboration with Victim Support Services (VSS) in carrying out this research, the methods used and their limitations are explored. We also review the role of VSS in the criminal justice system and in connection to the network of supports that provide intervention, therapy and educational. We situate both VSS and Flinders University in a criminal justice network. In so doing, we seek to recognise the iterative nature of research and practice and the distinct requirements of agencies that understand victims, as per their mandate, through an institutional prism. In this regard, we offer some reflection on the ethics process, the consultations regarding establishing interview protocols and potential ethical dilemmas arising from the intervention of the research into the interviewees’ lives. We situate and develop the idea that the victim is the subject to research and agency mandates and as such he/she is constructed as a subject of rights and dignity.

Narrative therapy seeks to empower the individual to take control of the victimisation through an active construction of the traumatic incident rather than passively experiencing its negative effects (Androff in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services 93:38–46, 2012; Bal et al. in Acts of memory: cultural recall in the present. University Press of New England, Hanover, 1999). Before therapists can engage in such devices, it is necessary to posit some possible roadmaps including the main features that will likely set up the path to survival. This chapter expands on the work by Frank (The Wounded Storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), Barnes (Partner Abuse 4:380–398, 2013) and Jirek (Qualitative Social Work 16:166–188, 2017) to explore victim recovery through reflexive narratives (engaging meaning work in an ordered pathway). This approach is grounded in an understanding of human dignity, inclusive of the variety of ways that victims of crime use coping devices to gain validation or defer active recovery for another time. Strategies involving the active or passive managing of identity will be explored. The model incorporates a reflection on constructing narratives as a response to cultural pressures (Barnes in Partner Abuse 4:380–398, 2013; McGarry and Walklate in Victims: trauma, testimony and justice. Routledge, 2015). The chapter will proceed by offering a brief exploration of meaning work and its importance for victim-survivors. This will be followed by an explication of recovery pathways by way of four adaptations.

In this chapter, we draw on the survey and qualitative interview findings to investigate victims’ development of a recovery narrative in relation to support and validation perceived and received. This allows for an exploration of the vicissitudes of opportunities for, or obstacles, to validation. Findings on validation through both formal and informal support has been addressed ambiguously throughout the literature in terms of the links between benefits and consequences of validation for victims (Kunst et al. 2014). We discuss validation as gained through formal supports and through informal supports, in turn.In relation to formal support, we focus on the police, courts, and health and counselling services. Formal validation has a symbolic value to victims, especially that provided by the police (Elliott et al. in Policing and Society 24:588–601, 2014). The dichotomy cathartic/confronting experience in the context of formal support (Parsons and Bergin in Journal of Traumatic Stress 23:182–188, 2010) will be explored in more detail. In our discussion of informal support, we refer to that offered by family, relatives, friends and/or colleagues. Based on our analysis of the results, informal support is an important factor in determining victim recovery, yet is less explored in the literature on alcohol and other drug (AOD) consumption among crime victims’ AOD literature on crime victims. Having an informal network, such as a friend or relative, present to bear witness to a victim’s narrative therapy is key to their validation; however, the individual must be a ‘suitable listener’ (Bal et al. in Acts of memory: cultural recall in the present. University Press of New England, Hanover, 1999).

We examine coping strategies, and how they play into the recovery narrative according to the results of the survey, interviews and focus groups. We probe respondents’ reflections on the injustice that has shaped the development of their victim identity and their coping devices, including how it relates to their need for self-medication.Many victims develop individual and social defence strategies, or what we refer to as ‘shock absorption’ strategies, through what has been referred to as the ‘impact disorganisation phase’ (Frieze et al. in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 18:299–315, 1987). However, avoidance coping is understood to become ‘maladaptive’ and difficult to overcome (Wilson et al. in Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 19:587–593, 2012). It is also commonly agreed that lifelong overuse of maladaptive or avoidance coping strategies results in ‘impaired adjustment to stress’ (Wilson et al. in Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 19:587–593, 2012). However, since ‘disengagement coping’ involves disconnecting the individual from the victimisation, self-medication plays a complex role within an unfolding victim-survivor narrative. In this respect, we review self-medication as dulling or deferring. Still, how an individual responds to trauma is linked to a unique life trajectory. For poly-victims, in particular, some form of avoidance or detachment may be adaptive to the negotiation of a survivor identity (Jordan in Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand 5:48–56, 2013) and for the achievement of short and long term goals.

In this chapter we describe differences in the reflections of victims on their experience. To get behind the distinction between of simple and complex poly-victims or those suffering from recent or historical trauma, we recognise the role played by chance. The difference between the groups lies in the relative prominence of post-traumatic stress disorder among the victims who have faced historical trauma. In seeking to understand how victims reflexively engage with their narrative chances, it is important that a backdrop to those chances be provided. We posit distinctions in the chance narrative that are reflected in both the focus group discussions and interview data.

This article explores how British immigration control policy was carried out during the nineteen-seventies to filter immigration, while addressing the perceived problem of ‘non-white’ colonial migration. Recently released government documents suggest that the immigration control system should be viewed as a series of inter-connected institutions and actors that operated under the influence of a number of different, and often contradictory, factors. The result of these competing factors was an immigration control system that, relying on the paradoxical whims of the government and other sections of civil society, was restrictive and suspicious towards potential migrants, but at the same time constrained in its behaviour.

There is a deeply held view within criminology that victims’ rights ‘movements’ are to be resisted. There is equally entrenched opinion amongst victim advocates that persons accused of offences have rights including human rights but persons as victims do not. 1 Both perspectives are fixated on the relationship between victim and accused. Both fail to ‘see’ the state in relation to persons as victims of crime and abuse of power. 2 This chapter considers how, through the lens of human rights, it may come more clearly into view.

This article explores the practice of ‘virginity testing’ by British immigration officers in the late 1970s through the internal documents of the Home Office held at the National Archives in London. By analysing these documents, we argue that the ‘virginity testing’ controversy demonstrates the intersectionality of discrimination faced by migrant women from the Indian subcontinent attempting to enter Britain in the 1970s. Previous discussions of the practice have focused on either the dimension of ‘race’ or gender as the determining factor behind this invasive procedure, but this article shows that both dimensions are of equal importance in explaining why immigration officers undertook ‘testing’ for virginity during border control investigations. The emphasis within the immigration control system on preventing ‘bogus’ migration informed how immigration officers processed potential migrants and this framework of suspicion allowed the practice of ‘virginity testing’ to occur.

Since its emergence in the mid-1990s the increased use, illegal importation and home production of methamphetamine in Australia have sparked significant concern among the community, law enforcement agencies and policy-makers alike. In particular, the normalisation of methamphetamine consumption within some sub-groups, notably young people through the dance-party scene, has elicited a strong media concern and reactive law enforcement response. The classification and sale of pseudoephedrine through pharmacies, the implementation of Project STOP, and the intensification of punitive regulations are just some examples of the tough-on-crime reaction of the Federal and State governments. However, the response to the emerging methamphetamine so-called 'epidemic' in Australia should also encompass a critical analysis of the demand-side of the illicit drug industry. Given the need to focus on the safety and welfare of individuals within the community, Australia's response to this synthetic drug has recently begun moving towards more comprehensive demand-reduction initiatives and treatments.

The efficacy and effectiveness of the European Convention of Human Rights depends on the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. In the past and until recently, the trust in and actual authority of the Court has predominantly compensated for the lack of direct and executive power over signatory parties to the European Convention. However, the workload of the Court is increasing at an exponential rate; at the same time, individuals from several new member states are not making full use of this enforcement machinery. As a result of these two elements, combined with the lack of execution of some judgments for legal–political reasons, compliance with the Court's judgments has become a priority in the political agenda of the Council of Europe. Some recent developments include Protocol 14 to the European Convention and the setting up of the Group of Wise Persons. These actions indicate that the Council of Europe has recognised that effective enforcement machinery is paramount for its credibility.

Providing you with a wide-ranging introduction to key international issues in crime and its control, this book covers all essential theories, and clearly explains their relevance to the world today. Going beyond just looking at organized crime, the book covers a range of topics including: human rights, terrorism trafficking, cybercrime, environmental crime, international law. Plenty of case studies and examples are included throughout, including the Bali 9, Rana Plaza and the shooting of Charles De Menezes, and tips on further reading make it easy to know where to go to engage with more debates in the field. Making sure you’re up to date with current issues, this book will be essential reading for students in Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as those in Law and International Relations.

This book adopts a critical criminological approach to analyze the production, representation and role of crime in the emerging international order. It analyzes the role of power and its influence on the dynamics of criminalization at an international level, facilitating an examination of the geopolitics of international criminal justice. Such an approach to crime is well-developed in domestic criminology; however, this critical approach is yet to be used to explore the relationship between power, crime and justice in an international setting. This book brings together contrasting opinions on how courts, prosecutors, judges, NGOs, and other bodies act to reflexively produce the social reality of international justice. In doing this, it bridges the gaps between the fields of sociology, criminology, international relations, political science, and international law to explore the problems and prospects of international criminal justice and illustrate the role of crime and criminalization in a complex, evolving, and contested international society. Refereed/Peer-reviewed