Kelly Richards's research while affiliated with Queensland University of Technology and other places
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Publications (41)
This chapter explores the epistemological and methodological questions we encountered when undertaking research on a perpetrator intervention program for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander men convicted of serious sexual offending (including against children) in Queensland, Australia. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the researc...
Sociological and historical research into sexual violence against children has reported consistently that it is girls who have most often been the subject of sexual, psychological and physical violence in both familial and institutional settings in modernity. However, more recently, public inquiries have provided evidence that during the 20th centu...
Sociological and historical research into sexual violence against children has reported consistently that it is girls who have most often been the subject of sexual, psychological and physical violence in both familial and institutional settings in modernity. However, more recently, public inquiries have provided evidence that during the 20th centu...
Pedophile hunting – abetted by digital technologies – has spread rapidly, resulting in detrimental outcomes, including suicides of hunters’ targets. The scant research on these groups adopts a functionalist argument that they have emerged to fill a security deficit – to undertake work that police are incapable of due to resource and skill deficits...
Purpose of Review
We are reviewing recent research into the community integration of men convicted of a sexual offence and their (risk) management. This is a high-profile political issue that binds together research in psychology, criminology, politics, health, public health, and policy studies. The review will demonstrate that a multi-disciplinary...
Policies designed to prevent sexual (re)offending are often proposed on behalf of survivors of sexual violence. However, no research has examined survivors’ beliefs about the causes of sexual offending. This is a critical gap, because how individuals understand the causes of sexual offending has long been thought to inform their support for particu...
Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) are a feature of the criminal justice landscape in Canada, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, parts of Western Europe, and South Australia. Prior research indicates that members of the public may oppose CoSA due to a belief that by supporting perpetrators, CoSA undermine the interests of s...
Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) appear to reduce the sexual recidivism of core members (i.e., individuals convicted of sexual offending). It remains unclear, however, how they do so. While much previous scholarship has hypothesized that the relations between core members and CoSA volunteers promote desistance from sexual offending, the...
The literature on desistance from crime shows that desisters often engage in a process of rebiographing, crafting life stories – or “redemption scripts” – that make sense of their move away from crime. However, this literature has largely excluded nonwhite offenders and sexual offenders. The current study addresses these gaps by examining the desis...
How police understand youth offending at least partly informs their responses to it. It is therefore vital to document police implicit theories about youth offending. However, little previous research has examined this topic. This article addresses this gap by examining police implicit theories about youth crime and how it ought to be addressed. Us...
In Australia, the pace of legislative reform in relation to the post-sentence management of sex offenders has been particularly frenetic since 2016. This article analyses these recent reforms, arguing that while they have been extensive in number, they have not been extensive in nature: governments have simply sought to do more of the same, even th...
Romance fraud affects thousands of victims globally, yet few scholars have studied it. The dynamics of relationships between victims and offenders are not well understood, and the effects are rarely discussed. This article adapts the concept of psychological abuse from studies of domestic violence to better understand romance fraud. Using interview...
The interactions of police with young people with cognitive disabilities (YPWCD) have seldom been considered in research, even though this group is over-represented in the criminal justice system. This article presents the results of a qualitative study into YPWCD’s experiences with police in Queensland, Australia. Semi-structured interviews were u...
Young people with cognitive disabilities (YPWCD) are overrepresented as offenders in the criminal justice system. However, most existing research on this topic examines overrepresentation in courts and corrections rather than at the police gatekeeping stage of the criminal justice process. Furthermore, while the views of other groups have been docu...
Police views of young people inform the way they exercise discretion over this group. However, few studies have sought to formally document and examine police views of young people. The limited existing research is also mostly dated. This article begins to address this gap in the literature by presenting the results of semi-structured qualitative i...
Institutional Review Boards often raise concerns about qualitative research with vulnerable populations such as crime victims, and assume that research with vulnerable populations will be distressing for participants. It is therefore vital to examine whether participants do in fact experience adverse effects stemming from their participation. The e...
Understanding public opinion about the causes of pedophilia and/or child sex offending is vital, as the views of the public influence how governments respond to sexual offenders. However, little research has been undertaken on this topic. This study addresses this gap by examining the causes that members of the public ascribe to pedophilia and/or c...
Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) have recently become part of the criminal justice landscape. However, little has been documented on public views about COSA. The existing research on this topic is entirely quantitative, providing no insight into the reasons behind public support for COSA. This study addresses this gap by analyzing comme...
The quality of feedback provided to university students has long been recognised as the most important predictor of student learning and satisfaction. However, providing quality feedback to students is challenging in the current context, in which universities increasingly rely on casualised and inexperienced academic staff to assess undergraduate w...
In recent decades, restorative justice has come to occupy an accepted part of many criminal justice landscapes across the Western world. Scholars have therefore attempted to make sense of the rise of restorative justice in Western countries, and a number of traditional histories of various restorative practices have emerged in this context. These a...
National Assessment of Australia’s Children’s Courts (the ‘national study’).1 e i ally this arti le fo uses on the perceptions of magistrates in the New South Wales (NSW) Children’s Court (‘NSWCC’ or the ‘Court’) in relation to the issues facing Indigenous young people in the Court’s criminal jurisdiction generally, and the potential of Indigenous...
Restorative justice and therapeutic jurisprudence measures have recently been introduced into youth justice systems. As gatekeepers to these measures, Children’s Court magistrates play a crucial role in their success. However, little research has been undertaken on magistrates’ views of these measures. This article addresses this gap by presenting...
Although fraud has been practised throughout history, the advent of the internet has created new and effective avenues for targeting potential victims. Victims of online fraud experience substantial financial and other harms, resulting in annual losses in Australia of more than $2b, significant organisational disruption and devastating human suffer...
In recent years, numerous current affairs stories on online fraud victimisation have been broadcast on Australian television. These stories typically feature highly organised, international ‘sting’ operations, in which alleged offenders are arrested and investigated by law enforcement. These portrayals of police responses influence the expectations...
PCYCs, individually and as a whole, are highly valued in communities across Queensland. Participants in this evaluation identified numerous benefits of PCYCs, including: providing structured low-cost activities for young people and other community groups; developing positive relationships and trust between young people and police; developing young...
This article revisits 'diversion' in the context of youth justice in Australia. Although 'diversion' is omnipresent in youth justice, it is rarely subject to critical examination. This article raises four interrelated questions: what young people are to be 'diverted' from and to; whether young people are to be 'diverted' from the criminal justice s...
While the discipline of ‘criminology’ has existed within Australian universities for more than half a century, the introduction of discrete ‘criminology’ and justice programmes is much more recent. Little is known, however, about the current state of play when it comes to what a degree in ‘criminology’ actually entails. With growing student enrolme...
Review of 'Researching Crime and Justice: Tales from the Field' and 'Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices.'
Problem-oriented justice and therapeutic jurisprudence seek to incorporate innovative court practices to tackle offenders’ behaviour and the problems associated with offending (e.g. substance abuse, mental health issues). A common feature of this approach is the emphasis on ensuring defendants play an active role in the criminal justice process. In...
This chapter presents an introduction to and thematic analysis of the chapters in Qualitative Criminology: Stories from the Field.
This chapter presents an overview of restorative justice and therapeutic jurisprudence processes and considers how these alternative routs to sentencing and punishment respond to offenders with vulnerabilities. The chapter also makes some observations about the need for language competence among offenders who participate in these processes and the...
Qualitative researchers in the discipline of criminology perform a wide range of challenging tasks. They interview prisoners, police officers, magistrates and judges. They speak with survivors of domestic violence, and drink tea with the mothers of murdered children. They observe courts and communities, investigate the decision-making processes of...
Citations
... Only a few studies have directly explored identity construction in hunting groups. Like de Rond et al. (2022) but based on a 'cyberethnography', Hussey et al. (2021Hussey et al. ( :1316 found that hunters typically position children as innocent victims to be saved from dangerous monsters to establish themselves 'as brave child saviours' (2021:1320). As with de Rond et al., these archetypal characters reinforce each other: the more impotent the police are perceived to be, the more vulnerable the child, the more beastly the monster, the more heroic the hunter. ...
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... This study begins to address this gap by presenting an analysis of the ITs that police hold about youth offending in particular. The larger study for which police were interviewed (Cross, Dwyer, & Richards, 2015) sought to document the youth crime prevention impacts of Police-Citizens Youth Clubs (PCYCs) in Queensland, Australia. In discussing this broader topic, police interviewed for the study provided rich insights into their ITs of youth offending and how youth crime should be addressed. ...
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... This approach encourages people to make amends with the community by demonstrating their value and potential (Fox, 2015;Griffiths et al., 2007). In recent years, strengths-based approaches have had more attention, with increased focus on the Good Lives Model and prosocial inclusion (McCartan and Richards, 2021). In recent times, there has been a notable shift in the literature in relation to the importance and efficacy of strengths-based approaches to work with those who are justice involved (Hunter et al., 2016;Kewley, 2016;Woods et al., 2013). ...
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... As this is an exploratory study and the aim was to organise patterns in participants' responses as to why they selected their chosen podcast, I drew from Braun and Clarke's (2021) six-stage phases model of reflexive thematic analysis and used an inductive thematic analysis. This approach was undergirded by an experiential framework aimed at capturing and exploring the diversity of perspectives and understandings across participants (Richards, Death and Ronken 2021). I began by familiarising myself with the data and writing notes detailing my primary insights. ...
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... CoSA are now running internationally, as well as in prisons, to support the transition from custody to community (Azoulay et al., 2019;Kitson-Boyce et al., 2019). The relational aspects of CoSA are related to protective factors as they can create a sense of belonging among core members (Blagden et al., 2018;Kitson-Boyce et al., 2019;Richards, 2020) and thus help service users to manage their own risk and desist (McCartan & Kemshall, 2020). As such, research has found that participation in a CoSA leads to significantly lower rates of violent, sexual and general recidivism (Clarke et al., 2017;Duwe, 2018;Wilson et al., 2005). ...
... This is not unusual (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007, p. 340). While some participants have expressed explicit benefits and satisfaction to participation in research (including my own) (Richards & Cross, 2018), this does not always provide a sufficient counter balance to the distress of fraud victims and the devastation that many experience across all aspects of their lives. ...
... O'Sullivan et al., 2020). In broad terms, the narratives or "scripts" of desisters include common plot devices (Richards et al., 2020): ...
... Policing research has given increased attention to the values, skills and experience police bring to their work (Schulenberg, 2010), and some recent work has investigated values such as 'blameworthiness' in relation to discretionary decision-making with adults (Ishoy & Dabney, 2018). However, there has been less attention to investigation of the values that inform decision-making with young people (see Richards, 2019;Richards et al., 2019). This is an important gap given that police have significant scope for the use of discretion with this group -particularly where offences are 'low level' and they have the opportunity to refer to diversion programmes or support services. ...
... Given the risk to children posed by those who do reoffend and the potential harm to victims of repeat offences-coupled with the potential to intervene and prevent further offendingcriminal justice responses to prevent recidivism remain an important focus. Indeed, the effective post-sentence management of child sex offenders has been an area of 'frenetic' policy and legislative reform (Bartels, Walvisch & Richards 2019). ...
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... were very dissatisfied after reporting the incident because the problems were not solved (46.2%) and/or the police were indifferent (42.3%). In turn, the qualitative study carried by Cross and Richards (2015) showed that victims feel blamed by the police itself: "this is your fault, we can't do anything; "you are one of the thousands who are robbed" (pp. 169-170). ...
