- School of Social Science
University of Queensland
St Lucia, Brisbane QLD 4072
Despite widespread community concern about the incidence of lethal violence against women in Australia, the numbers and rates of women murdered each year have been falling for almost 30 years. The risk of homicide victimisation among... more
Despite widespread community concern about the incidence of lethal violence against women in Australia, the numbers and rates of women murdered each year have been falling for almost 30 years. The risk of homicide victimisation among Australian women is now the lowest it has ever been since federation. Few studies have explored these patterns or sought to explain their development. One plausible explanation, anticipated by feminist theories of violence, is that homicide has declined as the status of women and gender equality have increased. In this paper, I analyse changes in the annual female homicide victimisation rate in Australia from 1962 to 2016. Using unobserved components models, I investigate the extent to which increases in either the status of women or gender equality can account for the decline in female homicide victimisation since the late 1980s. Despite absolute and relative advances in women's educational access and achievement, labour force participation, and earnings, those changes had little discernible impact on the aggregate-level risk of lethal violence against women. Instead, other social and economic conditions, such as falling unemployment, the shrinking of the young male population and ongoing urbanisation, seem better able to explain recent improvements in women's safety.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Legal attitudes, such as legal cynicism and perceived legitimacy, develop through an ongoing process of legal socialization involving both legal authorities and non‐legal agents of socialization. Most research on the non‐legal sources of... more
Legal attitudes, such as legal cynicism and perceived legitimacy, develop through an ongoing process of legal socialization involving both legal authorities and non‐legal agents of socialization. Most research on the non‐legal sources of legal socialization has focused on authorities most relevant to the early stages of the life‐course. Few studies have examined the influence of non‐legal sources of socialization relevant to adulthood, even though early pioneers of the field anticipated that legal socialization involves a life‐long process. In this article, I investigate the influence of changes in intimate relationships and their characteristics on legal cynicism and legitimacy. Using data from a longitudinal study of serious, young offenders, I investigate the extent to which changes in relationship characteristics contribute to within‐individual changes in legitimacy and legal cynicism during the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. The results indicate that changes in the characteristics of intimate relationships are associated with changes in legal attitudes, and that these involve both direct and indirect effects. These findings highlight the importance of non‐legal sources of legal socialization over the life‐course and show that they are not confined to the authority figures traditionally acknowledged in the legal socialization literature.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
CHAPTER 3 The Implications of Family Poverty for a Pattern of Persistent Offending Carter Hay and Walter Forrest Up through the 1960s, poverty was widely seen as having a strong effect on criminal involvement, largely on the basis of... more
CHAPTER 3 The Implications of Family Poverty for a Pattern of Persistent Offending Carter Hay and Walter Forrest Up through the 1960s, poverty was widely seen as having a strong effect on criminal involvement, largely on the basis of research that measured crime in terms of ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Lifecourse interdependence refers to the ways in which time-stable, individual characteristics might interact with the events and developments. This concept has become increasingly popular as criminologists seek to explain the differences... more
Lifecourse interdependence refers to the ways in which time-stable, individual characteristics might interact with the events and developments. This concept has become increasingly popular as criminologists seek to explain the differences between individuals' criminal trajectories ...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT By 2050, the majority of Australia’s surviving Indigenous languages are likely to become extinct. The intergenerational transmission of languages in which children acquire languages from their parents and grandparents is a key... more
ABSTRACT By 2050, the majority of Australia’s surviving Indigenous languages are likely to become extinct. The intergenerational transmission of languages in which children acquire languages from their parents and grandparents is a key mechanism for reversing language shift, but many Australian children whose parents speak an Indigenous language do not speak that language. Using a unique, national survey of Australian Indigenous children, I identify factors associated with the successful intergenerational transmission of Indigenous languages within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. Results highlight the importance of parents’ language use. Although community-level characteristics account for some of the variance in successful language transmission, parents who use Indigenous languages at home, speak them as well as they speak English, and do not also speak a creole language are more likely to pass those languages onto their children.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Rising demand for social housing has induced housing authorities to find ways to increase the utilisation of existing housing stock, including targeting households thought to be living in homes that are larger than they need.... more
ABSTRACT Rising demand for social housing has induced housing authorities to find ways to increase the utilisation of existing housing stock, including targeting households thought to be living in homes that are larger than they need. This “under-occupation” of social housing is common among older tenants who, as with other under-occupiers, have been subject to unpopular measures designed to encourage downsizing. Yet little attention has been given to the housing needs of under-occupying older tenants and the ability of the social housing sector to meet those needs. In reviewing a new housing initiative for older under-occupying social housing tenants in Brisbane, Australia, this paper explores the housing needs and experience of this cohort. It shows that under-occupancy is a lived experience for some tenants and that downsizing to a smaller property is an attractive, albeit limited option. This suggests that policy prescriptions about the problem of older under-occupiers in the social housing sector should be reframed around the issue of tenants housing needs as they age.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Criminology, Psychology, Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and 14 moreLaw, Criminal Justice, Violence, Juvenile Delinquency, Self Control, Early Childhood, Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior in Adolescence, Longitudinal, Temperament, Sociology and Political science, Protective factors, Fighting, Externalizing Problems, and Protective Factor
Research Interests: Engineering, Criminology, Psychology, Law, Juvenile Delinquency, and 10 moreSelf Control, Injury Prevention, Suicide prevention, Delinquency, Youth Violence, Health and Social Science, Human Factors and Ergonomics, Poison Control, Guidance and Counseling Intervention Programs, and Developmental and Educational Psychology
In recent years a number of studies have observed empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service, and desistance from crime. The relationships between these life-course... more
In recent years a number of studies have observed empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service, and desistance from crime. The relationships between these life-course transitions and changes in criminal behaviour have been cited as evidence in support of social control and social learning theories of delinquency and in contradiction to alternative theoretical perspectives that downplay the significance of life events in the development of criminal behaviour over the lifespan. In this paper we develop and test an alternative explanation for the apparent impact of marriage on criminal and delinquent behaviour. We argue that transitions such as marriage might also promote desistance, in part, by enabling offenders to develop and exercise increased self-control. We then test this hypothesis using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and explore the implications of our findings for the study of desistance and for self-control theory.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In recent years, a number of studies have observed empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service and desistance from crime. The relationships between these life-course... more
In recent years, a number of studies have observed empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service and desistance from crime. The relationships between these life-course transitions and changes in criminal ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Medicine and Indigenous
Research Interests:
Although much is known about the consequences of low self-control for crime, much less is known about how self-control develops and evolves over the life course. Moreover, the limited research in this area largely has emphasized the study... more
Although much is known about the consequences of low self-control for crime, much less is known about how self-control develops and evolves over the life course. Moreover, the limited research in this area largely has emphasized the study of how "natural" changes in social ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Introduction Studies point to an adverse effect of detention on the mental health of asylum seekers, yet the use of detention has been rising in several recipient countries. In general, many asylum seekers suffer from psychological... more
Introduction Studies point to an adverse effect of detention on the mental health of asylum seekers, yet the use of detention has been rising in several recipient countries. In general, many asylum seekers suffer from psychological disorders and symptoms, and a large percentage has been subjected to torture. The UNHCR recommends that torture survivors generally should not be detained. Due to a lack of systematic screening it is often unknown whether the asylum seeker is a torture survivor. This causes several hindrances for the protection of this vulnerable group from potentially harmful factors such as deprivation of liberty. Objectives To examine the impact of detention on the mental health of adult torture survivors. Aims To produce a comprehensive review of the literature and bring attention to a potentially harmful praxis. Methods The systematic review follows the PRISMA guidelines. The search was made in PubMed (Medline), PsychINFO, PILOTS and IBSS. A screening of reference lists identified additional studies. The search was broadened to ‘asylum seekers’ as very few studies were found on torture survivors specifically. Results Presently (Oct. 2012) the review is in the stage of analyzing, thus results are preliminary. Currently the identified studies amount to 26. All studies report mental health problems among the asylum seekers and some identify detention itself as a contributing factor to these problems. Conclusions Detention does pose a risk factor in regard to deteriorating the mental health of asylum seekers. Although torture survivors might be an especially vulnerable group, research is almost non-existent.
Research Interests:
Early involvement in crime and delinquency (i.e., in late childhood and/or early adolescence) is a significant risk factor for a range of problems throughout the life course. The origins of much antisocial and criminal behaviour in... more
Early involvement in crime and delinquency (i.e., in late childhood and/or early adolescence) is a significant risk factor for a range of problems throughout the life course. The origins of much antisocial and criminal behaviour in adolescence and adulthood can be traced back to early childhood (Vassallo, Smart, Sanson, Dussuyer, & Victoria, 2002). As teenagers, early-onset offenders are at greater risk of school failure, drug and alcohol abuse, unsafe sexual behaviour, unwanted pregnancy and dangerous driving compared to late-onset offenders. In addition, earlyonset offenders are thought to play an important role in promoting antisocial behaviour among their same-age peers in the middle and later stages of adolescence by providing examples for others to imitate and encouraging others within their peer groups to offend (Moffitt, 1993). Early-onset offending is also an important risk factor for life-course-persistent offending (Farrington, Lambert, & West, 1998; Loeber & Farrington, ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In recent years a number of studies have observed empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service, and desistance from crime. The relationships between these life-course... more
In recent years a number of studies have observed empirical associations between the occurrence of key life events such as marriage, employment, and military service, and desistance from crime. The relationships between these life-course transitions and changes in criminal behaviour have been cited as evidence in support of social control and social learning theories of delinquency and in contradiction to alternative theoretical perspectives that downplay the significance of life events in the development of criminal behaviour over the lifespan. In this paper we develop and test an alternative explanation for the apparent impact of marriage on criminal and delinquent behaviour. We argue that transitions such as marriage might also promote desistance, in part, by enabling offenders to develop and exercise increased self-control. We then test this hypothesis using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and explore the implications of our findings for the study of d...
Research Interests:
Although self-reported and official measures of criminal behaviour are highly correlated, the concordance between self-reports and official records appears to vary across the population. Few studies, however, have considered the range of... more
Although self-reported and official measures of criminal behaviour are highly correlated, the concordance between self-reports and official records appears to vary across the population. Few studies, however, have considered the range of individual traits and characteristics that might influence the relative accuracy of self-reports and official records. Using data collected from the Australian Temperament Project, we investigated the concordance between official records and self-reports together with some of the factors that might influence it. Those with criminal records were 3.5 times more likely to report police contact than those with no criminal record. However, there were significant sources of individual-level variation in their convergence, and notably honest respondents were less likely to report an interaction with police. Those at risk of crime and delinquency were less likely to consent to official records searches. Many individual characteristics that predisposed indiv...
Research Interests:
Althoughmuch is known about the consequences of low self-control, little is known about how it devel-ops during adolescence and what types of experiences trigger important changes. This study considers this by examining a key component of... more
Althoughmuch is known about the consequences of low self-control, little is known about how it devel-ops during adolescence and what types of experiences trigger important changes. This study considers this by examining a key component of low self-control—risk-seeking propensity—to determine its sta-bility and change during early adolescence, its effects on changes in delinquency, and its responsiveness to a comprehensive delinquency-reduction program. These issues were examined with data from the Children at Risk (CAR) program, a randomly assigned intervention that targeted early adolescents. The analysis revealed substantial stability in risk seeking, but there was evidence of change as well, and these changes were associated with contemporaneous changes in delinquency. Risk-seeking changes were not, however, a result of participation in the CAR program, despite that program’s success at reducing some forms of delinquency. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings ...
Research Interests:
Althoughmuch is known about the consequences of low self-control, little is known about how it devel-ops during adolescence and what types of experiences trigger important changes. This study considers this by examining a key component of... more
Althoughmuch is known about the consequences of low self-control, little is known about how it devel-ops during adolescence and what types of experiences trigger important changes. This study considers this by examining a key component of low self-control—risk-seeking propensity—to determine its sta-bility and change during early adolescence, its effects on changes in delinquency, and its responsiveness to a comprehensive delinquency-reduction program. These issues were examined with data from the Children at Risk (CAR) program, a randomly assigned intervention that targeted early adolescents. The analysis revealed substantial stability in risk seeking, but there was evidence of change as well, and these changes were associated with contemporaneous changes in delinquency. Risk-seeking changes were not, however, a result of participation in the CAR program, despite that program’s success at reducing some forms of delinquency. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings ...
Research Interests:
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs commissioned the Vietnam Veterans Family Study, a comprehensive survey of Vietnam veterans and Australian Defence Force personnel and their families, in 2007. The survey was intended to enable an... more
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs commissioned the Vietnam Veterans Family Study, a comprehensive survey of Vietnam veterans and Australian Defence Force personnel and their families, in 2007. The survey was intended to enable an assessment of the impact of service in the Vietnam War on the lives of the sons and daughters of Australia’s veterans. It is based on a study design in which the families of Vietnam veterans can be compared with the families of other men who served in the Australian military during the Vietnam War (1962 to 1975) but were not deployed (referred to here as Vietnam-era personnel). Using this approach, differences between the experiences of sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era personnel can be used to estimate the impact of service in the Vietnam War, provided that rival explanations can be excluded.
Research Interests:
Part Two (Supplementary Analysis of the Study Data) provides the results of a supplementary analysis carried out by the Australian Institute of Family Studies; the results of the analysis lend weight to the Mortality Study results.
Research Interests:
Although the empirical links between marriage and desistance have been established clearly, the evidence that analogous life-course transitions can also facilitate changes in criminal behavior is mixed. While some studies suggest that... more
Although the empirical links between marriage and desistance have been established clearly, the evidence that analogous life-course transitions can also facilitate changes in criminal behavior is mixed. While some studies suggest that cohabitation may affect crime in ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Using data from India's first (1992-93) and third (2005-06) National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-I and NFHS-III) this study examined the fertility differentials between major social groups and the extent to which these varied between... more
Using data from India's first (1992-93) and third (2005-06) National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-I and NFHS-III) this study examined the fertility differentials between major social groups and the extent to which these varied between states and over time. The analysis was based on a sample of 54,030 and 55,369 currently married women aged 15-34 in the NFHS-I and NFHS-III respectively. Reported parity and desired family size were used to assess variations in fertility behaviour. The results show that interstate variation in childbearing patterns within social groups was at least as high as, if not higher than, variation between states (net of other influences) in both periods, 1992-93 and 2005-06. The variations among Hindus, the poor and Muslims were more noticeable than for other groups. These variations did not decline between 1992-93 and 2005-06 and may have even increased slightly for some groups. Further, there was no consistent north-south divide in either fertility behavi...
Research Interests:
The long-term effects of military deployment on the mental health of war veterans have been investigated extensively, but few studies have examined the long-term impact of parental deployment on children's mental health. Using a... more
The long-term effects of military deployment on the mental health of war veterans have been investigated extensively, but few studies have examined the long-term impact of parental deployment on children's mental health. Using a retrospective, multigenerational survey and propensity score analysis to adjust for selection effects and endogeneity bias, we investigated the impact of parental deployment on the mental health of the adult children of Australian veterans of the Vietnam War. We analysed data from 1966 adult men (35%) and women (65%) whose fathers (N = 1418) were selected at random from the population of surviving men who served in the Australian army during the Vietnam War (1962-75). Mean age of respondents was 37. The main outcome measures were self-reported diagnosis or treatment for anxiety and depression (i.e. lifetime and previous 12 months), suicidality based on Psychiatric Symptom Frequency Scale, and current mental health as measured by the Mental Health Invento...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Several studies report that women exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) are less likely to use contraception, but the evidence that violence consistently constrains contraceptive use is inconclusive. One plausible explanation for... more
Several studies report that women exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) are less likely to use contraception, but the evidence that violence consistently constrains contraceptive use is inconclusive. One plausible explanation for this ambiguity is that the effects of violence on contraceptive use depend on whether couples are likely to have conflicting attitudes to it. In particular, although some men may engage in violence to prevent their partners from using contraception, they are only likely to do so if they have reason to oppose its use. Using a longitudinal follow-up to the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2), conducted among a sample of rural, married women of childbearing age, this study investigated whether the relationship between IPV and contraceptive use is contingent on whether women's contraceptive intentions contradict men's fertility preferences. Results indicate that women experiencing IPV are less likely to undergo sterilization, but only if ...