Marie Segrave

Women's survival post-imprisonment: Connecting imprisonment with pains past and present

The article examines the issue of womens unnatural post-prison deaths in Victoria, Australia, through the lens of womens accounts of survival and near-death after exit from prison. Central to this analysis is the seldom addressed or acknowledged relationship between trauma and the multiple harms and disadvantages that women experience both in the prison system and on the outside. In seeking to explicate the centrality oftrauma to womens experiences inside and outside the system, we draw upon the accounts of the women with whom we have spoken in the course of this research. A key theme that emerges from these narratives is the prevalence of trauma, near-death experiences and harms faced by women who have survived. Such accounts run counter to assumptions within existing post-release research that imprisonment comprises a discrete traumatic episode within a womans life and that there is a useful distinction to be made between women who are strong enough to survive and those who die. In this way we offer a contribution towards revising possible future directions for critical feminist and prison scholars.

Counting the costs of imprisonment: researching women's post-release deaths in Victoria

The prevailing body of research on post-release mortality is limited in scope, resulting in significant gaps in knowledge of post-release survival and unnatural death. The absence of current monitoring and research on women’s mortality rates in Victoria in combination with recent statistics indicating the high rates of unnatural death for women released from prison (in Victoria and elsewhere), provide key impetus for Surviving Outside, a project that sought to combine quantitative and qualitative data on women’s post-prison survival and death. This article documents the methodological challenges we faced in undertaking this research. Our experience encapsulates broader challenges presented to contemporary critical criminology and those who seek to develop independent and/or alternative research agendas to those devised by state institutions. In documenting these challenges we provide a critical examination of the relationship between government research agendas, the production of knowledge and the limitations associated with administrative research and reporting. We argue that future research in this area requires a departure from traditional modes of inquiry to enable a nuanced, comprehensive understanding of the circumstances that underpin post-release survival and death.

Honouring white masculinity: culture, terror, provocation and the law

Late in 2004 in Victoria, James Ramage was convicted of manslaughter.1 The jury found that Ramage had been provoked to kill his wife by her comments about their marriage and his role as a husband and by her alleged expression of disgust about their sexual life together. This decision provoked sustained critique and commentary and was followed quickly by the release of the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s (VLRC) recommendations for reform of the defence of provocation.2 Close attention to the trial transcripts in the case exposes much about how the criminal justice system understands, interprets and reinforces conventional gender roles. When the Ramage case is compared with another recent intimate homicide case, Yasso,3 which involved an Iraqi national seeking Australian citizenship, these gender roles can be understood as embedded in the discourses of the ‘war on terror’ where Western legal and political liberal democratic systems such as Australia’s are implicitly set against those of nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan and cultures where women are viewed by the West as ‘oppressed’.4 Like James Ramage, Mazin Yasso killed his wife. In this article, we explore these cases, discussing the language and gender concepts that the provocation defence mobilises. We argue that a comparison of the two cases reveals the on-going protection of white middle-class masculinity and the condemnation of other masculinities associated with ‘less civilised’ cultures, which are seen as inherently violent and oppressive.

Rethinking women's post-release reintegration and 'success'

In this article, we interrogate three assumptions related to women’s post-release reintegration and success that are prevalent within and across official, institutional and criminological discourses and practice. Our analysis is based on qualitative interviews conducted with support workers and women about experiences and perceptions of support and success in Victoria, Australia. Ultimately, we contend that the introduction of women-specific policies and support programs in Victoria has had limited impact because they are at core premised upon the same problematic success-related assumptions that have failed to adequately serve mainstream prisoner populations, i.e. men. We issue a broader challenge to criminologists to rethink dominant understandings about post-release reintegration in the interests of facilitating alternative approaches that respond to the structural injustices that define the post-release trajectories of women and men.

Police-based victim services: Australian and international models

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of the strengths and weaknesses of selected models of police‐based victim services. It aims to provide an overview of the current predominant models of police‐based victim support in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia. It also aims to advance a typology of police‐based victim services as a useful analytic tool for understanding the varying models.Design/methodology/approach – The research was based on extensive documentary analysis supplemented by semi‐structured interviews with 17 practitioners in the USA, Canada and Australia. Sites were selected for interview based on documentary research which indicated that they had developed police‐based victim services in their organization that were either particularly representative or innovative.Findings – Police‐based victim services can be categorized into three broad models: unit services, dedicated liaison officer services, and referral services. Each model has strengths and weaknesses in terms of s...

Human Trafficking and Human Rights

Anti-trafficking efforts have a long tradition of engaging a human rights advocacy approach. However, the approaches adopted have been clearly gendered in their focus and, as Kapur identifies (2005), quite narrow in their scope, as they have focused primarily on the trafficking of women into the sex industry (sex trafficking), sex work and sex workers (Kapur 2005). This article argues that there is much to be gained through examining the potential for the promotion of anti-trafficking efforts that engage with international human rights instruments beyond the existing trafficking-specific framework, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (an Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime 2000). The central argument here is that the current international approach to trafficking in persons is focused primarily on law and order, where criminal justice efforts are at the foundation of the framework to address and eradicate this practice. The parameters of the overarching convention clearly establish an agenda that emphasises the trafficking in persons as cross-border criminal activity. This article draws upon the authors research on the Australian response to people trafficking and on Freedom, Respect, Equality, Dignity: Action, the major NGO report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights regarding Australias implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ANACLC, HRLRC and KLC 2008). It is argued that the framework of this offers an alternative position from which to advocate for a more comprehensive understanding of, and response to, trafficking in persons.

The maelstrom of punishment, mental illness, intellectual disability and cognitive impairment

While the issue of mental health and its intersection with the criminal justice system has gained traction in recent years, there remains a limited examination of the full remit of offenders with disabilities and cognitive impairments in prison, and the ways in which punishment is utilized to respond, control and contain these individuals’ lives. The rising over-representation of people with mental illness, disabilities and/or cognitive impairments in the criminal justice system and in prisons in particular is a global trend, often explained simply by the absence of or decline in appropriate mental healthcare over time. However, such surface explanation has allowed for certain troubling notions about the “underlying nature” of people with mental illness, disabilities and/or cognitive impairments to gain traction. This Special Issue sought to challenge this common articulation of “the reason” for the high rates of people with mental illness, disabilities and/or cognitive impairments in our criminal justice system and recognize that these intersections of mental health, disability, cognitive impairment and criminal justice represent a “maelstrom,” that is “a situation or state of confused movement or violent turmoil” (Oxford English Living Dictionary, 2017). This Special Issue brings together scholars in the midst of this maelstrom; scholars who are seeking to make sense of and bring to the fore the turmoil of the shifting sands of criminal justice, punishment and health policy.

Care Bears and Crime-Fighters: Police Operational Styles and Victims of Crime

Over the last two decades victims’ rights and victims’ needs have gained traction as a key concern for policing agencies internationally (Hoyle and Young 2003). A range of developments have seen a shift in police protocols regarding their interactions with victims of crime — often based on research with victims and/or successful advocacy by victims’ rights organisations. These shifts range from expanding the curriculum of police recruit training (to include more detailed recognition of victims of crime) to increasing contact protocols with victims during the course of investigations and to the development of systems of referral to connect victims of crime with support services provided by agencies in the broader community.

Guest Editor Introduction for Special Issue on Borders, Gender and Punishment

In 2003, Punishment & Society ran a special issue on migration and punishment documenting the harshening of penal rhetoric and practices against migrants. Since then the scale of movement and the securitization of the border has only increased. Yet, with a few notable exceptions, scholars in the field of ‘punishment and society’ have, for the most part, paid little attention to the treatment of non-citizens either at the borders or in the criminal justice systems of the nation state. This special issue seeks to fill in some of these gaps, with a particular focus on the relationship between gender, borders and punishment. State agencies concerned with immigration and borders are increasingly positioned as law enforcement agencies, while law enforcement agencies have become charged with responding to the challenges of increased global mobility. Such shifts have not only increased the reach of state power, often in concert with the private sector, they have also introduced new practices which look and feel punitive, even as they fail to conform to the limits and regulation of criminal law (Zedner, 2013). Many of the responses to unwanted global mobility occur summarily. They also happen in spaces of decreasing visibility. The borderlands and frontiers between the global North and global South have effectively stretched policing beyond the state (Bowling and Sheptycki, 2012; Pickering and Weber, 2013). Enforcement does

Understanding and responding to family violence risks to children: Evidence-based risk assessment for children and the importance of gender:

This article responds to recent calls to better understand and respond to family violence risks to children. Drawing on the findings of a wider research project on family violence risk which engaged with over 1000 members of Victoria’s family violence system through a survey, focus groups and in-depth interviews, this article examines practitioners’ views on current practices and future needs for reform to improve family violence risk assessment practices for children. The findings have implications both nationally and internationally, given the dearth of evidence-based family violence risks assessment tools. Key findings reinforce the importance of interagency collaboration and a shared responsibility for children impacted by family violence across services and the importance of specialised training in this area. Caution, however, is raised about ongoing patterns of blame for mothers affected by family violence: we conclude that the need to address children’s risk in family violence is critical but ongoing attention to how gendered patterns structure family violence and social responses is also essential.