“It Will Never Happen Again”: The Myth of Flood Immunity in Brisbane

Although scholarship shows how collective memory aids community resilience to hazards, sociopolitical forces erode this transformative potential. A study of Brisbane River floods highlights the entanglement of memory with a myth of flood immunity, created by community faith in dams to prevent flooding, infrequent floods, drought and hydrological misunderstandings, and upheld by floodplain development perceived as an economic booster. When flooding threatened the myth of immunity in 2011, the event was framed as dam mismanagement to deflect attention from poor land use practices and government culpability. This myth endures, leaving South East Queensland no more resilient for unpredictable but certain future flooding.     

Public Sector Labour Relations in Western Australia – An Overview

The election of a LiberalNational Coalition government in 1993 heralded a period of significant and sustained change in Western Australian public sector labour relations. As legislator, the Coalition government embarked upon a program to decentralise and deregulate the Western Australian industrial relations system; as an employer, the government has had to respond to the economic imperatives which have faced most employers in recent years. The result has been a period of major change in the public sector – employment levels have declined as services have been privatised or contracted out; the proportion of non-permanent and part-time employees has risen significantly. Individual workplace agreements have been introduced; individualised performance-related management and reward systems have increased; and the scope for union involvement has diminished, as has the level and density of union membership. The experience of the public sector therefore reflects many of the workplace changes that are also found in the private sector. It also brings the government's industrial relations policies into sharper focus.     

Loosening the ties that bind: the hidden harms of civil gang injunctions in San Diego County

Civil gang injunctions (CGIs) are court-ordered restraining orders that are being utilized in the name of controlling the daily routine of alleged gang members, reducing crime, and eliminating ‘public nuisances’ in working-class neighborhoods of color. In this study, we draw upon interviews and court observations conducted between 2009 and 2014 in San Diego County to examine the perceptions of a subset of those who have been listed on CGIs or other gang suppression methods, and those who work closely with them, about their individual and collective impacts. We find that the men and women in our study experience several hidden harms of gang enforcement measures that damage their ability to connect with others in the community, including their own family members and friends; and reduce their ability to pursue opportunities related to education, housing, and employment. We demonstrate that the loss of these bonds to community and opportunities, leads to perceptions of injustice and, in some instances, a transformation in gang activity, rather than its elimination. Ultimately, these exploratory findings raise questions about the logic and justice of gang suppression.     

A ‘double edged sword’: discretion and compulsion in policing domestic violence

Policing domestic violence is a complex area in which there are divergent views about the extent to which front line police action should be mandated by legislation and guidance. This study set in Victoria, Australia raised questions about the balance between discretion and compulsion in policing domestic violence through researching the implementation of the Code of Practice used to respond to domestic violence incidents. The project team interrogated aggregate data from the police database on family violence and also interviewed 125 police members (60 sergeants and 65 constables) to explore the attitudes to the Code of Practice and policing domestic violence. The findings reveal that discretion within a range of options is circumscribed. Variable understandings of the nature of domestic violence and the role of risk assessment and management suggest that constrained and guided discretion may be required to achieve optimum effectiveness in policing responses to domestic violence.     

Framing innocents: the wrongly convicted as victims of state harm

We adapt the victimology of ‘state harms’ framework outlined by Kauzlarich et al. (Critical Criminology, 10(3), 173–194, 2001) to understand the post-exoneration experiences of 18 death row exonerees. Kauzlarich et al. develop six points of commonality shared by most victims of state crime. Application of this framework to death row exonerees highlights the role the state plays in creating and exacerbating the harms they suffer. This analysis also lays a foundation for further theoretical inquiry into the wrongful conviction of the innocent as a form of state crime.     

The Question is When: The Ideology of Al Qaeda and the Reality of Bioterrorism

The subject of women fighting in jihad has been a controversial and under-researched topic in classical and contemporary Muslim religious literature. In general, classical authorities did not see women fighting except in the most extraordinary circumstances yet did not expressly forbid it. Today radical Muslims seeking to widen their appeal have modified these conclusions and made it possible for women to participate together with men on the battlefield and in martyrdom operations. This article looks at the classical religious and legal literature to contextualize the arguments being made for females participating in jihad in contemporary times.