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Low support for gender equality (GE) predicts attitudes supporting violence against women (VAW). However, little is known about the influence of attitudes toward different manifestations of GE. This study extends knowledge by assessing the relative strength of attitudes to GE across seven theoretically derived dimensions, and their association with attitudes toward VAW. 17,542 Australians participated in the 2017 National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women Survey. Population means were calculated for the following scales formed from survey questions: the Community Attitudes Supportive of Violence Against Women Scale (CASVAWS), the Gender Equality Attitudes Scale (GEAS) and measures within the GEAS representing the theoretical dimensions. There was variation in support for GE between the measures. The lower the support for GE, the higher the support for VAW. Although all GEAS measures included in regression modelling contributed to variance in the CASVAWS, two accounted for more than half. The study suggests benefits in using a multidimensional model of GE to mitigate cultural support for VAW, with emphasis on the private sphere and countering hostility toward women and rigid gender roles and identities.

Despite the burgeoning research on mass incarceration, women are rarely its focus. Racialised women, whose rates of incarceration have increased more rapidly than other groups, are at the best marginal within much of this literature. Within juvenile justice systems, racialised girls and young women are also disproportionately criminalised and remain markedly over-represented but are often overlooked. The absence of racialised women and girls from dominant accounts of punishment and incarceration is a matter of epistemological, ethical and political concern. Intersectionality offers one means to treat racialised women and girls as focal points for research and advocacy directed towards a reduction in criminalisation and incarceration. While intersectionality does not determine how the knowledge produced is deployed, recognising those who have been unrecognised is a necessary first step in striving to bring about positive change through praxis. Flawed mainstream accounts are unlikely to generate strategies that are well-aligned with the needs and interests of those who remain largely invisible.

Whether men and women are equally violent in their intimate relationships has animated considerable debate in the scholarly literature, and increasingly, in policy and law reform processes. This de...

Some Australian states and territories, particularly New South Wales (NSW), Queensland and Victoria have a strong history of prison activism, focusing on women's criminalisation and imprisonment. This chapter briefly introduces women's imprisonment in Australia. It examines the history of activism challenging women's criminalisation and imprisonment, focusing on NSW, before outlining and discussing post-Corston reform developments. Activism focusing on women's prisons in Australia has long been situated within wider feminist politics, founded in women's experiences, contributing to and shaped by feminist legal theory and praxis. Increasingly, Australia is shifting towards a mixed penal economy with more public-private prisons and privatised services. The introduction of anti-discrimination laws provided a strategy adopted by Australian activists to challenge the treatment of women in prison. In Australia, in the face of government intransigence, activists have developed and delivered their visions of women-centred initiatives informed by experience and have shared knowledge about what is meaningful and relevant to women.

Feminist efforts to reform criminal defences to homicide have largely focused on expanding self-defence for women who kill their abusers on the one hand, and constricting defences for men who kill their female partners and former partners on the other. Self-defence is the preferred defence for battered women who kill: it is a complete defence; it conveys that the woman’s act was justified; and its elements permit the jury to hear evidence about the experience of battering and the social realities that provide context to the woman’s acts. Yet self-defence may fail. So much depends upon judicial rulings on the evidence offered by the defence. Jurors may not hear all the testimony about the deceased’s violence or threats (R v Craig). The woman’s claim to self-defence may be hobbled by the fact that she failed to disclose the abuse, seek help or leave the relationship. Women who kill outside of a live confrontation may be denied self-defence even without a formal “imminence” requirement. And, women’s credibility will be challenged by prosecutors who point to evidence of independence or prior violence by the woman to contest whether she was a “real” battered woman who faced lethal danger or rather a batterer herself or even, as some prosecutors propose, someone who chose homicide as the preferred way out of an unhappy marriage. In addition, even on an expansive reading of self-defence, not all battered women who kill do so in circumstances that are a good fit with self-defence. For these reasons we turn our attention to other complete defences to homicide that may be available to women who kill an abusive partner. These have attracted less scholarly attention than self-defence or provocation, and an assessment of their potential application to battered women’s homicide cases seems overdue. Recent reforms in several Australian states that have extended the defences of duress and necessity to murder, and the novel use of duress in a recent Canadian case, provide added reasons for this inquiry.

This chapter provides an overview of the historical and contemporary responses to domestic violence in Australia. The idea that domestic violence is a private matter largely prevailed until the 1970s, when feminist activism and governmental inquiries emphasised that it is a social problem mostly affecting women. Contemporary policy responses in Australia draw on a gendered analysis of domestic violence although some groups challenge that approach. The terms domestic and family violence are often used interchangeably in Australia, in part because many Indigenous communities prefer family violence as it encompasses Aboriginal kinship. The term family violence does not necessarily signal a gender-neutral approach. Legal responses to domestic violence include civil protection orders which were introduced in Australian States and Territories from the 1980s. Police have a central role in civil protection order systems which marks out Australian approaches as distinctive. The chapter examines the available evidence concerning the prevalence of domestic violence in Australia, and legal responses to domestic violence. It also discusses the experiences of marginalised women, particularly Indigenous women whose experience of family violence is mediated by the ongoing effects of colonisation and discrimination. The chapter looks beyond the traditional legal focus of civil and criminal law and includes information about other measures to respond to domestic violence, such as emergency accommodation, perpetrator programs and recently introduced multidisciplinary groups tasked with responding to high risk victims. It concludes by identifying areas that require greater attention in Australia.

Background While the uptake of transradial access site is growing, there are concerns about associated radial injury. We report a feasibility study of a technique that enables both 5Fr diagnostic and PCI cases to be undertaken without an arterial sheath using conventional diagnostic and guide catheters with a modified balloon assisted tracking (BAT) technique. Methods We performed a prospective single center pilot study to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of sheathless radial artery access and BAT to perform coronary angiography and angioplasty using conventional 5 Fr diagnostic and guide catheters. We assessed for successful acquisition of good quality angiogram, completion of the angioplasty and access site complications. Results 5 Fr sheathless cardiac catheterization was undertaken in diagnostic (55%) and PCI cases (45%, all indications) in 60 consecutive patients (mean age 62.8 ± 11.4 years) using conventional catheters. The procedure was successfully performed via the radial artery using a sheathless technique with BAT in 93.3% of patients. All patients had a patent radial artery following removal of the Helix device and there were no recorded access site complications. Conclusions Trans-radial cardiac catheterisation for diagnostic and PCI cases using 5F Sheathless catheters (whose outer diameter is smaller than a 3Fr introducer sheath) with BAT appears feasible and allows both cardiac catheterization for diagnostic and PCI indications to be undertaken safely using conventional catheters through the radial route, with high success rates

Over the past three decades, debates about legal reforms to lethal violence have been evident across Australia and in other jurisdictions. While these debates have often arisen from shared concerns, the resulting reforms have taken different approaches to reformulating the defences to murder. This article considers the divergent approaches taken to reform and the process of law reform itself, documenting the significance of localised histories and high profile cases. It also questions whether reforms to the defences to murder have responded adequately to the varying contexts within which men and women kill. The analysis reveals the limitations of law reform inquiries that fail to take a comprehensive approach to considering the operation of the laws in this area. The article calls for ongoing critical analysis of homicide within and beyond the law.

This article examines trends in the resolution of homicide cases involving battered women defendants from 2000 to 2010 in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Australia and Canada appear to have some commonalities in their treatment of such cases with higher acquittal rates and a greater reliance on plea bargaining to produce manslaughter verdicts, as compared with New Zealand. Although New Zealand’s small number of cases makes it difficult to generalise, its overall trends appear to be different from those observed in Australia and Canada, in both the high proportion of cases proceeding to trial and those resulting in conviction for murder. The authors conclude that there is a need to re-examine prosecutorial practices of proceeding to trial on murder rather than manslaughter charges even when manslaughter would be ultimately satisfactory to the prosecution, and of accepting guilty pleas to manslaughter verdicts in circumstances where the battered woman appears to have a strong self-defence case.

(2010). Beyond Prison: Women, Incarceration and Justice? Introduction. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 22, Beyond Prison: Women, Incarceration and Justice?, pp. 189-192.

This article examines the substantial growth in the number of young people remanded in custody in New South Wales (NSW) and the increasing number of young people granted bail but unable to meet the conditions of bail. It points to the inadequacies of the Bail Act 1978 (NSW) for dealing with young people, and highlights the ways in which recent developments in law and practice and the politicisation of bail mark a substantial departure from the well-established purposes of bail and remand. It also identifies an agenda for future research concerning bail decision-making for young people.

This article examines legal responses to women charged with a homicide offence arising from killing an abusive partner and reviews Australian cases over the period 1991–2007. We focus on cases involving Indigenous women, due to their very substantial overrepresentation as victims and offenders in intimate homicides in Australia. We find that the Australian case law to date has not developed principles adequate to reflect battered women's interests. Our analysis of cases involving Indigenous battered women indicates that the battering they had experienced and their disadvantaged circumstances were commonly read as indicators of personal deficits, and any evidence of structural disadvantage was muted. This research suggests that the limited impact of battered women's litigation in Australia is in part attributable to the psychological individualism of the criminal law identified by Norrie (2001, 2005), which is not confined to the trial stage but also shapes prosecutorial discretion and sentencing. We urge future research to shift the focus beyond battered woman syndrome and the trial process to examine plea bargaining and sentencing, and we suggest that advocates on behalf of battered women cannot rely on case law developments to deliver change but need to pursue multiple strategies.

In little over a decade, the concept of justice reinvestment has captured the imagination of communities, the actors in the criminal justice system and legislatures alike in a range of Western countries. With its promise of reduced spending, decarceration and improved public safety, justice reinvestment emerged at a unique point in time as a reaction to mass incarceration. In the USA, and increasingly elsewhere, a combination of fiscal, political and societal conditions are favourable to the emergence of strategies of penal reduction, including justice reinvestment, to an extent not seen since the 1970s.

The previous two chapters raised a series of challenges to some of the often taken for granted claims made on behalf of justice reinvestment policies. Chapter 3 looked behind the claims of locality and community and in particular interrogated how they may or may not work for over-represented and vulnerable groups, including people with mental illness and/or cognitive disability, women, and Indigenous and other racialised peoples. Chapter 4 examined some of the problematic features behind the methodological and measurement claims of justice reinvestment as ‘data-driven’ and ‘evidence-based’, asking what is counted and what counts, and drawing out tensions between ‘evidence-based practice’ and social justice concerns. This chapter addresses the issue of the portability of justice reinvestment as a form of ‘policy transfer’, an investigation which places the issue of context centre stage. It looks briefly at the issue of criminal justice policy transfer more generally and through some specific examples in the UK and Australia, before examining some of the key pre-conditions for and barriers to, the successful adoption of justice reinvestment policies in Australia. This is followed by a discussion of various dangers and misconceptions in processes of policy formation, including what we call the ‘rationalist fallacy’ which is exemplified in the common ‘roll out’ metaphor and the susceptibility of criminal justice policy to populist backlash.

Justice reinvestment is avowedly data-driven and evidence-based, features that stand in contrast to common approaches to criminal justice policy-making in many jurisdictions. The added impetus towards evidence-based approaches generated by justice reinvestment largely has been welcomed (Clear, 2010). However, what is measured and what counts as evidence are important considerations with significant implications. These are more than simply technical matters. This chapter examines the way in which evidence-based policy and practice (EBP) has been conceptualised and given effect through the methodologies and measures commonly used in justice reinvestment, and how this, in turn, has influenced the direction of justice reinvestment. The chapter also notes some other possible conceptions of evidence and forms of measurement that may be more congruent with the aspirations towards a justice reinvestment that is social justice-oriented.

As we have identified in earlier chapters, the origins of justice reinvestment situated it within a place-based approach to public policy. In the words of Tucker and Cadora (2003: 2, 4), ‘justice reinvestment seeks community level solutions to community level problems … solutions are required that are locally tailored and locally determined’. Place-based approaches are usually conceived as initiatives specific to a particular geographic location, rather than those that operate at a state-wide or federal level. In this chapter we explore the meaning and implications of place-based approaches to justice reinvestment. We do this through a critical analysis of locality, place and community and consider whether place-based approaches can respond to social groups who have been particularly impacted through rising incarceration rates.

As more US states have taken up justice reinvestment to deal with ballooning corrections populations and the budgetary realities that go with them, justice reinvestment has taken a range of shapes. Cumulatively, these strategies have contributed to a change in the political climate whereby lowering imprisonment rates can be seriously entertained by public officials (Austin et al., 2013: 1). Moreover, according to Gary Dennis of the BJA, JRI initiatives have led to improvements in levels of professionalism within the not-for-profit sector and faith-based organisations as their work gets drawn into a framework involving stronger oversight and evaluation.

The virtues claimed for restorative justice include its emotional engagement with crime and the opportunities afforded to participants by its discursive character. Yet these issues are rarely explored from a perspective that is attentive to gendered or other asymmetrical forms of social relations. This article explores key issues that remain under-developed in the restorative justice literature from a feminist perspective, taking domestic violence as a focus. Central to this analysis are questions of victims' interests and safety, expectations about the victim's role and the appeal to apology and forgiveness in much of the restorative justice literature. It is argued that the challenge of taking gendered harms seriously may require an approach that differs from common restorative justice practices such as the development of hybrid models that draw from both conventional criminal justice and restorative justice.

Research suggests that separation can be a time of heightened risk for women who have experienced domestic violence. This may be especially so for women who are mothers as they may face ongoing contact with their abusive former partner as arrangements are reached and exercised for the care of children. Moreover, under Australian constitutional arrangements, separated women with children who seek legal assistance may face complex and competing practices and procedures as they engage with laws and courts in both Commonwealth and State jurisdictions dealing with Family Law and Criminal Law. Yet there has been little Australian research that has attempted to understand the experiences of this vulnerable group. This article reports selected findings from a study of women who were negotiating and facilitating residence and contact arrangements 1 for their children with a former partner who had abused them (Kaye, Stubbs & Tolmie 2003). The article analyses women’s attempts to protect themselves and their children from domestic violence using legal processes. In doing so it contributes to the empirical literature in two ways. Firstly, it demonstrates that women (at least when they are mothers) are not autonomous actors. Women’s experiences of domestic abuse and the manner in which they engage with the legal system are profoundly affected by their relationships with others, especially their children. We found evidence that women’s and children’s safety are often both at risk in circumstances of domestic violence and that women’s capacity to achieve effective legal protection from domestic violence may be diminished as a consequence of their role as mothers. Secondly, the study provides recognition of the fact that where women have separated from a former partner their recourse to legal protection from violence for themselves and their children will typically require them to engage with both State legislation and family law. We found that inconsistencies and failures in coordination

It is well established that victims of crime are often measured against an idealised standard of victimhood, typically to the detriment of those who are seen to depart in significant ways from notions of the ideal. However, as Paul Rock noted (2002, p. 17), we need to give more attention to the ways in which various framing discourses are deployed and give shape to our understandings of victimisation. There is ‘interpretative work done at every level in bringing the categories victim and offender into play’ (Rock 2002, p. 21). Laws and legal practices are significant in how matters are framed and in constituting the subjects and objects of law. In this chapter we examine this further by reference to the multiple and competing conceptions of the victim of domestic violence that emerge in different domains of legal practice. We focus on victims of domestic violence who as mother are more likely to be subjected to particular scrutiny and to competing, and often conflicting, requirements and obligations (Douglas and Walsh 2010; Hester 2010; Jaffe et al. 2003; Kaye et al. 2003).

This article considers the construction of particular forms of masculinity and femininity in the context of a new global market for sex and marital trade via the Internet. The work arose from research conducted on disproportionate levels of violence against Filipino women in Australia; in particular, high victimisation rates in cases of spousal homicides compared to other Australian women. The research led to a consideration of the intersection between gender, ethnicity and first world/third world relations. Violence against Filipino women in Australia is examined with reference to the material and symbolic dimensions which shaped their experiences as immigrants and their postcolonial identities. The gendered and racialised nature of the movement of women across national boundaries, and their subsequent exposure to more extreme levels of violence, gives the research a broader focus than simply the experiences of Filipino women in Australia. We pay particular attention to the Internet as a site for the representation of Filipino women and as a marketplace for buying and selling women. The Internet now represents a significant international site through which Filipino women are represented as partners for sex or marriage. The Internet also exemplifies the manner in which economic privilege and access to technological knowledge and resources reinforce hierarchies based in ‘race’ and gender and reproduce inequality within and through cyberspace.

(1999). An International Criminal Justice Strategy To Eliminate Violence Against Women. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 314-318.

(1998). Feminisms, Self-Defence, and Battered Women: A Response to Hubble's ‘Straw Feminist’. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 73-84.

Introduction Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reported in 1991 (RCADIC, 1991), rates of incarceration of Indigenous women have grown substantially, to a greater extent than for Indigenous men. However, despite their substantial over-representation in prisons, Indigenous women too rarely feature as subjects of penal discourse or penal politics. RCADIC was of enormous significance in providing detailed analysis of the underlying factors that contributed to the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody and to deaths in custody (RCADIC, 1991). However, the official reports ‘lacked a gender-specific analysis’ (Marchetti, 2007: 8) and the experiences of Indigenous women were largely overlooked and subsumed in a generalised understanding of Indigenous experience, based on the experiences of men (Marchetti, 2008). The failure to examine the criminalisa- tion and incarceration of Indigenous women1 continues today in research, policy and criminal justice practices. References

(1995). The International Crime Surveys: Some Methodological Concerns. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 346-361.

In this chapter we examine legal responses to battered women who have killed abusers with a special focus on indigenous women in Australia. For many battered women facing charges arising from killing a violent man, the capacity to successfully argue self-defence continues to be limited by the gender bias of the defence and by stereotyped understandings of women, intimate relations, and commonly also of indigeneity, that shape the reception of narratives concerning domestic violence. A well-established literature suggests that the introduction of expert testimony about battered woman syndrome (BWS) in support of defences to homicide has contributed to these stereotypes and to the medicalisation and pathologisation of battered women's behaviour. While compassionate or merciful outcomes are sometimes evident, mercy too often substitutes for an acquittal and distorts women's experiences rendering them as pathetic or irrational. We agree with that literature, but in this paper our focus is somewhat different. Legal analysis in Australian cases typically pays insufficient attention to the social context of the defendant and the offence. Therefore, in this chapter we examine the consequences of the failure of the criminal law to recognise and respond to structural disadvantage. We also argue for greater attention to prosecutorial discretion as an important domain of legal decision-making. Most of the recent cases we have identified of women charged with a homicide offence against a background of domestic violence have resulted in guilty pleas. Few have gone to trial.

This comment addresses some of the issues which feminists have expressed about the Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) and its use as grounds for self-defence in cases where women kill their batterer par...

This chapter reviews debates about the use of Restorative Justice (RJ) for gendered violence, such as domestic violence or family violence. It identifies theoretical and empirical limitations to the capacity of generic models of RJ to promote victim interests for offences related to violence against women. Part 2 considers gendered violence in Indigenous communities and notes that research and commentary often fails to recognize Indigenous women’s needs and interests. It concludes that the best way forward is to move beyond oppositional contrasts between RJ and criminal justice to develop hybrid models that adopt anti-subordination as a principle, supported by the requisite resources to protect that end, in working towards safe and just outcomes.