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Criminologists have long recognised the importance of individual actors and settings for understanding offending. Our knowledge of alcohol-related violence in and around licensed premises has been enhanced through research investigating the contribution of perpetrators, victims, and offence settings including licensed premises. However the unique role of licensed premises place managers in contributing to, or reducing violence in and around their premises has received little attention. The research presented in this thesis extends existing scholarship by fusing situational crime prevention's concept of place management with regulatory theory to propose and explore a new integrated theoretical model - the Place Manager Regulatory Compliance Model - for understanding the role of place managers, competitors and regulators in reducing intoxication and violence on licensed premises. The first of three studies presented utilises a survey (N = 97) of licensed premises' place managers and demonstrates how place managers' willingness to comply and ability to comply culminate in the new theoretical construct of Place Manager Potential. Place Manager Potential is explored to examine the extent to which it explains licensed premises place manager's creation of a compliance culture at their premises. Study two utilises data from the survey to explore how informal regulation provided by competitors and the compliance actions of the formal regulator explain place managers' decisions for controlling intoxication and violence on their premises. Finally, study three explores the relationship between Place Manager Potential and actual police recorded offences occurring at the premises of place managers who completed the survey. Results of the research demonstrate the utility of Place Manager Potential in understanding how place managers operate their premises. They also demonstrate that place managers pay close attention to the actions of competitors and regulators, with each impactin, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Full Text

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Police high-speed vehicular pursuits are contentious due to lives lost and property damage resulting from unintended crashes. To reduce pursuit-related trauma, and potential litigation, police jurisdictions have introduced restrictive policies that limit when officers may engage in a pursuit. However, opponents of restrictive pursuit policies believe this results in reduced deterrence, increased criminal offending and dangerous driving practices. This thesis tested these assumptions using a single case study of Queensland, Australia, where the Queensland Police Service (QPS) implemented two restrictive pursuit policy iterations in 2007 and 2011. Five studies sought to establish the policies’ specific aims; whether they were achieved; if there was resistance to the policy reforms; and, if so, what were the rationales for such resistance. The major theoretical contribution of this thesis was to support the notion that Dent and Goldberg’s (1999a; 1999b) Loss Resistance Theory can help explain why police might resist policy reform. Loss Resistance Theory argues that change per se is not the root cause for resistance to performance altering policies, but stakeholders’ perceived losses in terms of their autonomy, status, and independent discretion, resulting from the policy change. Lipsky’s (2010) Discretionary Independence Theory applied to police officers acting as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 2010), provided an additional theoretical platform to test policy limitations on officers’ decision-making. Several other theories were derived from the literature and used to assist data collection and provide focus to the analysis. These included Classical Deterrence Theory, as derived from Hobbes (1651), Beccaria (1764/1872) and Bentham (1780/1988), that was tested relative to alterations in offending behaviour. Moore’s Public Value Theory (1995), that explains public acceptance of authority and coercion is judged against citizens’ expectations for justice, fairness, eff

Irregular migration policies differ across western nations, nevertheless, a practice almost all have in common is the use of immigration detention. The detention facilities are intended to deter, manage, and deport unauthorised arrivals. Australia’s approach to immigration detention has been unique compared to other countries for two main reasons. Firstly, in recent decades Australia has utilised long-term, indefinite detention rather than holding people in immigration detention facilities for the shortest time possible. The amount of time people are held within these facilities by the Australian government has increased considerably over the past decade from an average of 81 days in 2013 to 689 days in 2021. Second, Australia’s use of offshore detention facilities in the Republic of Nauru and Manus Island to house detainees has been exceptional, though other countries such as the United Kingdom recently appear to be adopting this approach too. The rising use of mandatory immigration detention by western nations such as Australia is a controversial topic. Over the past decade, this has been highlighted by media reports, public debate and a growing body of research criticising this policy approach (particularly the length of detention and conditions to which detainees are subject). Current literature details the prevalence of a range of wellbeing issues that detainees experience, either because of or which are exacerbated by their detention in these facilities. Despite the problems of immigration detention being widely recognised, the practice persists. Most of the previous research concerned with the experience of immigration detention focuses on the general immigration detention population, which mainly consists of men. The aim of this thesis was to address the existing gap in the literature by focusing on the experiences of women held in long-term immigration detention in Australia. The research broadly asks what impact long-term immigration detention has on women, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Full Text

This thesis draws on concepts from terrorism, political violence and criminology literature to examine the internal variations of al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya and the significance of grievances, ideology, social identity, social networks and physical geography. Overall, the findings from this research illustrate that the threat of terrorism from a single group can vary significantly across a country according to specific regional and local conditions. This research illustrates how terrorist organisations adapt attack patterns and strategies to maximise the opportunities presented by different aspects of a country's physical geography, including urban areas, borderlands and rough terrain characterised by dense forests. This research also identifies the human and geographical channels through which cross-border terrorist activities foster domestic terrorism. In so doing, it captures the centrality of local knowledge to the perpetuation of terrorist activities. The last three empirical chapters illustrate how terrorist organisations tap into and frame context-specific grievances and conditions to foster and politicise group identity, build support and in the target selection process. The findings from this thesis underscore the importance of adopting a historical, contemporary and context-focused approach to understanding the dynamics of terrorism. They also capture the interconnection between ideology, grievances, identity, social networks, and aspects of a country’s physical geography in shaping terrorist attack and recruitment patterns. The outcome of this thesis is a methodological approach for the cross-regional study of terrorism. The elements of the proposed approach, which form the basis of the five results chapters, are summarised in the concluding chapter of this thesis., Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Full Text

Multi-agency policing partnerships enable police agencies to address underlying social issues that contribute to crime and allow for longer-term solutions and potentially crime reductions. The success of these initiatives depends on how well police initiate and conduct these engagements. However, the concept of policing partnerships is not well understood and under-theorised. A better understanding of the process and system of engagement in these partnerships is needed. This is the central aim of this thesis: to identify and explore key factors and processes that facilitate or hinder multi-agency policing partnership implementation and engagement. In addition to identifying and exploring the key factors and processes in partnerships, the role of legal levers held by non-policing partners is informed by the third-party policing literature. The selection and engagement of non-police agencies and individuals because of the availability of legal levers to perform a crime prevention or control role underpins third-party policing theory. However, it is often assumed in this theory that police are aware, have knowledge and understanding of the legal levers available to partners and that the application of these legal levers is co-opted or coerced, by police. Whether these assumptions occur in such a clear manner has received limited attention in the literature. This is the second aim of the thesis: to gain an understanding of the role and use of legal levers in multi-agency policing partnerships, and particularly examine whether police conceptualise partnerships based on the availability of legal levers or partners, or whether legal levers come into play during formation, and to what extent they play a role in the maintenance of the partnership. To explore these two aims an international case study methodology was applied. Three case studies of partnerships addressing different crime and social issues across Australia and England were selected. The partnerships focused on, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Full Text

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Young people’s consumption of illicit substances at mass events (e.g., music festivals; school-leaver events) is a major health concern to authorities world-wide. Police are required to enforce laws on illicit substances at such mass events, but critics claim that heavy-handed police enforcement can alienate patrons and reduce their willingness to seek help from police in the event of an adverse reaction or overdose. In recent years, police in Australia have been urged to shift their approach from a ‘law enforcement’ approach to a ‘harm reduction’ approach at these types of events, particularly when dealing with young people. Harm reduction policing approaches focus on supply, demand and harm-minimisation associated with illicit drugs, with recent literature proposing that police discretionary decision-making and interpersonal interactions with users aimed at building trust and respect can contribute toward secondary harm reduction (Stevens, 2013). Despite the call for harm reduction policing approaches at these events, police still use crackdown tactics in Australia. These policing tactics have been linked to excessive consumption of drugs to avoid detection (e.g., Dunn & Degenhardt, 2009; Hickey et al., 2012). To foster young patrons’ help-seeking in illicit substance emergencies at mass events, it is important to better understand how they perceive police at mass events and policing responses that target illicit substances. Research demonstrates that public perceptions of procedural justice policing—fair treatment and fair decision-making—influences a range of attitudes and behaviours in citizens, including: satisfaction with police, compliance with police directives, trust in police, and willingness to cooperate with police (e.g., Hinds & Murphy, 2007; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). This prior research also shows that relational concerns regarding procedural justice tend to be more important for shaping attitudes and behaviours toward police than instrumental concerns

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, This dissertation purposively explores differing forms of online illicit drug markets with particular focus on why actors – both buyers and sellers – are increasingly incorporating digital technologies into illicit drug supply. The last decade has seen significant changes in illicit drug markets with buyers and sellers adopting a growing range of online platforms into their drug exchange milieu. Typically, however, efforts to explore online drug markets are limited in scope and often fail to highlight how online markets are a diverse set of platforms that are differentiated in meaningful ways. The work undertaken in this thesis extends on previous academic investigations by examining three unexplored forms of drug trading in digital spaces from the perspectives of those involved in these dynamic online markets. Specifically, an understanding of the evolving nature of online illicit drug markets across numerous platforms (e.g. the dark web, the surface web, and social media/encrypted messaging applications), the motivations and barriers for engaging in online illicit drug markets, how these are differentiated spaces, and how digital platforms are changing the drug exchange process, is of particular importance to the research presented here. To contribute to an understanding of these specific issues, this thesis through publication comprises seven chapters, four of which are manuscripts either published or currently under-review in peer-reviewed journals. After an introduction to the broader landscape of drug markets in Chapter 1, the first published manuscript (Chapter 2) provides a theoretical examination of the nature of illicit drug exchange in digital environments. It does so by critically analysing notions of rationality as they relate to conventional (i.e. offline) forms of drug distribution. This work then highlights how, as online exchanges are performed in an entirely new assemblage of human and non-human forces, the new structural configurations that drug e

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), School of Crim & Crim Justice, Arts, Education and Law, Corruption in any form is a serious crime that threatens democracies and governments, damages economies, causes devastating inefficiencies, diverts funds away from essential public services, and exacerbates inequalities, especially in developing nations. It negatively affects the lives and destinies of citizens, public bodies, businesses, governments, and charity organisations. Corruption is so infectious that it sometimes affects systems established to enforce the laws and control corruption. Indeed, research has shown that criminal justice systems (CJSs) or institutions, which are often the last resort for nations and citizens to address crimes that occur in other parts of the economy, including corruption, are severely affected by corruption. Corruption has attracted substantial academic attention for decades, with several studies reporting that citizens of developing countries in Africa and elsewhere perceived their countries’ criminal justice institutions (CJIs), especially the police and judiciary, as among the most corrupt public institutions. Despite the public perceptions of high corruption in CJSs, its negative consequences, and extensive research on general corruption, little research focuses on corruption in CJSs from the perspectives of criminal justice officials, and across multiple CJIs simultaneously. This study does precisely this. The current study uses theories of rational choice, routine activity, and crime pattern and situational crime prevention framework to examine various aspects of corruption across multiple CJIs in Ghana. Using interview data from 65 criminal justice and anti-corruption officials and spontaneous observations across three regions of Ghana, this thesis addresses six research questions. These are 1) What is the nature of criminal justice corruption in Ghana; 2) Which institutions and processes in Ghana’s CJS are affected by corruption and how; 3) What factors account for the occurrence and persistence of corruption in Ghana’s