Abstract
Building upon the renewed attention to the ways in which criminology may be ‘queered’ (or not), this article explores how a criminal justice paradigm has influenced lesbian and gay politics through an investigation of anti-homophobic research and lobbying focused on violence and harassment. It asks: What place does criminal justice occupy within sexual politics? Using the Australian state of Victoria as a case study, the article examines how the lesbian and gay anti-violence movement has utilized criminal justice theories, methodologies and approaches to explain and attempt to remedy ‘homophobic hate’. It provides three inter-connected examples of the permeation of criminal justice logics: (1) the victimization survey method, (2) the focus on police reform, and (3) elements of a punitive public discourse surrounding homophobic hate crime. These examples are nevertheless complicated by the persistence of institutionalized violence and state failure to ‘protect’ lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) lives. These discursive practices contribute to ‘queer penalities’, a term used to describe the ways in which lesbian and gay movements shape and contest the social meaning of terms such as ‘crime’, victimization and punishment.
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Notes
Victoria’s new hate crime law came into effect on December 2, 2009. The reformed Sentencing Act 1991 makes a crime motivated (wholly or partly) by hate or prejudice an aggravating factor at sentencing. Subsection 5(2) (daaa) was added upon recommendation from the Sentencing Advisory Council. In 2011, Victoria Police introduced a Prejudice Motivated Crime Strategy, intended largely to increase crime reporting in this area.
News of the reform and related developments above were publicly welcomed by mainstream lesbian and gay organizations, including ALSO Foundation, Victorian AIDS Council, Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria, Rainbow Families Council, Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and the Victorian Anti-Violence Project (see ‘Hate crime change pleases’ (2009)).
The body of empirical material that I draw upon includes five Victorian reports on victimization surveys of LGBT people published between 1994 and 2008, and lesbian and gay media including news coverage of hate crime sentencing reform and Victoria Police hate crime data collection. These materials were predominantly sourced online, such as the Star Observer website and the ‘news’ section of the Victorian Anti-Violence Project website. Other earlier materials (e.g. Gays and Lesbians Against Discrimination 1994; McKenzie 2000) were sourced in archival and library collections, such as the Rare Books Collection at Matheson Library (of Monash University) and the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.
These surveys may also have been influenced by community health research design, for example surrounding women’s health, gay men’s health and HIV.
Other recommendations appeal to State Government and community leaders to publicly denounce statements that have the effect of vilifying or inciting violence against lesbian and gay people, to pursue multiple legislative and policy avenues to address vilification and violence against lesbian and gay people and to fund and develop initiatives targeting lesbian and gay communities that seek to increase their capacity to deal with the threat and effects of homophobic harassment. Whilst I focus here on policy recommendations relating directly to policing, other recommendations target (and sometimes prioritize, as in With Respect) community education and civil law reforms.
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Russell, E.K. Queer Penalities: The Criminal Justice Paradigm in Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Politics. Crit Crim 25, 21–35 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9337-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9337-4