Crime, Criminalization and Refugees The Case of Sudanese Australians

This book explores criminal justice responses to Sudanese Australians, crime and victimization. Based on research in four major Queensland communities, it adopts a multi-faceted approach to capture the ‘voices’ of various interest groups. Challenging the concept that Sudanese Australian refugees are the criminal ‘other’ that primary definers such as the media or would have us believe, it also highlights the differently situated subgroups of Sudanese Australians with a focus on how individuals and groups develop and maintain a sense of belonging: not always successful and not always law abiding but by no means indicative of the reductive notion of the criminogenic refugee.

Introduction: Criminological perspectives on crime and refugees.- Research methods.- Media predictions and moral panics: Representation of  Sudanese refugees in Australia.- Serious talking: Community consultations.- Queensland’s Sudanese community survey.- Police perspectives o Sudanese Australians.- Conclusion.

Dr Darren Palmer is an Associate Professor of Criminology at Deakin University. He has been involved in various funded research projects, and has published widely on policing and surveillance, and violence in and around licensed venues. His research addresses issues such as body- worn police cameras and public banning schemes. He is currently working on 'pandemic policing'.

Dr Garry Coventry formally retired from teaching at James Cook University in November 2014, after an academic career that included positions at five Australian and two US universities. He was awarded the honour of Worldwide Who’s Who Professional of the Year, 2014, for the Social Sciences Industry. Now as an Adjunct Senior Researcher at James Cook University, his main projects involve working with American colleagues and the Indigenous community to undertake a workable and viable justice re-investment development strategy; an historical account of women, Australian ex-convict gangs and vigilante justice in 1851 San Francisco; and, a critical criminology analysis of the poor and social activists as political targets of the Philippines War on Drugs.