School of Justice - Research

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The School of Justice undertakes multi-disciplinary research in justice, which spans criminology, sociology, public policy and policing. The Justice School has international leaders in their field of research with significant success in undertaking research to address problems of crime, violence and security. Although it has a small staffing profile, the School has built a strong research culture by means of a dedicated research assistant position, an active mentoring program, a conference travel budget to support researchers, access to QUT mid career and early career staff development programs, a visiting scholars program, and an established seminar series attracting world class scholars.

Academic staff in the School are research active, with 86% holding PhDs and the rest currently undertaking doctoral research. There are three internationally recognised research teams in the School with current ARC or Category 1 Nationally Competitive funding. Collectively the staff supervise around 30 postgraduate research students who work on topics such as policing people experiencing mental health issues, policies relating to youth, drugs and crime, and transnational crime and implications for Customs administration (see list of current thesis topics).

Over the last five years, School of Justice staff have generated around $1.5 million in grant funding for a number of significant projects, including:

• ARC Linkage grant with the Queensland State Coroner to establish best practice guidelines for the use of internal autopsies,
• ARC Discovery grant on building rule of law capacity in Cambodia,
• ARC Discovery grant exploring high rates of violence among men in rural Australia, and
• A grant from the Qld Premier’s Unit to undertake a systematic analysis of sentencing and Indigenous status.

Other areas of research being undertaken by Justice staff include:

• Eco-Crime and Environmental Criminology
• Mining, work camps and violence,
• Youth Justice
• Indigenous issues in criminal justice and sentencing,
• Sex, sexuality and justice
• Child abuse
• Policing, Security and Intelligence
• Criminal networks and  Police corruption,
• On-line scams, fraud and cyber-crimes

The School is hosting an international conference on Crime, Justice and Social Democracy on 25-28 September 2011. For details, visit the conference website (www.crimejusticeconference.com).

Staff of the School publish their research in a range of outlets, including books and scholarly refereed journals.

See also the Grants and Achievements page.