This book examines the use of violence by children and young people in family settings and proposes specialised and age-appropriate responses to these children and young people It interrogates the adequacy and effectiveness of current service and justice system responses, including analysis of police, court and specialist service responses. It proposes new approaches to children and young people who use violence that are evidence based, non-punitive, and informed by an understanding of the complexity of needs and the importance of age appropriate service responses. Bringing together a range of Australian and International experts, it sheds new light on questions such as: How can we best understand and respond to the use of family violence by young people? To what extent do traditional family violence responses address the experiences of adolescents who use violence in family settings? What barriers to help seeking exist for parental and sibling victims of adolescent family violence? To what degree do existing support and justice services provide adequate responses to those using adolescent family violence and their families? In what circumstances do children kill their biological and adopted parents? The explicit focus on child and adolescent family violence produces new knowledge in the area of family violence, which will be of relevance to academics, policy makers and family violence practitioners in Australia and internationally.

This book is a collection of key legal decisions affecting Indigenous Australians, which have been re-imagined so as to be inclusive of Indigenous people's stories, historical experience, perspectives and worldviews. In this groundbreaking work, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars have collaborated to rewrite 16 key decisions. Spanning from 1889 to 2017, the judgments reflect the trajectory of Indigenous people's engagements with Australian law. The collection includes decisions that laid the foundation for the wrongful application of terra nullius and the long disavowal of native title. Contributors have also challenged narrow judicial interpretations of native title, which have denied recognition to Indigenous people who suffered the prolonged impacts of dispossession. Exciting new voices have reclaimed Australian law to deliver justice to the Stolen Generations and to families who have experienced institutional and police racism. Contributors have shown how judicial officers can use their power to challenge systemic racism and tell the stories of Indigenous people who have been dehumanised by the criminal justice system. The new judgments are characterised by intersectional perspectives which draw on postcolonial, critical race and whiteness theories. Several scholars have chosen to operate within the parameters of legal doctrine. Some have imagined new truth-telling forums, highlighting the strength and creative resistance of Indigenous people to oppression and exclusion. Others have rejected the possibility that the legal system, which has been integral to settler-colonialism, can ever deliver meaningful justice to Indigenous people.

This book examines the use of violence by children and young people in family settings and proposes specialised and age-appropriate responses to these children and young people It interrogates the adequacy and effectiveness of current service and justice system responses, including analysis of police, court and specialist service responses. It proposes new approaches to children and young people who use violence that are evidence based, non-punitive, and informed by an understanding of the complexity of needs and the importance of age appropriate service responses. Bringing together a range of Australian and International experts, it sheds new light on questions such as: How can we best understand and respond to the use of family violence by young people? To what extent do traditional family violence responses address the experiences of adolescents who use violence in family settings? What barriers to help seeking exist for parental and sibling victims of adolescent family violence? To what degree do existing support and justice services provide adequate responses to those using adolescent family violence and their families? In what circumstances do children kill their biological and adopted parents? The explicit focus on child and adolescent family violence produces new knowledge in the area of family violence, which will be of relevance to academics, policy makers and family violence practitioners in Australia and internationally.

This book is a collection of key legal decisions affecting Indigenous Australians, which have been re-imagined so as to be inclusive of Indigenous people's stories, historical experience, perspectives and worldviews. In this groundbreaking work, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars have collaborated to rewrite 16 key decisions. Spanning from 1889 to 2017, the judgments reflect the trajectory of Indigenous people's engagements with Australian law. The collection includes decisions that laid the foundation for the wrongful application of terra nullius and the long disavowal of native title. Contributors have also challenged narrow judicial interpretations of native title, which have denied recognition to Indigenous people who suffered the prolonged impacts of dispossession. Exciting new voices have reclaimed Australian law to deliver justice to the Stolen Generations and to families who have experienced institutional and police racism. Contributors have shown how judicial officers can use their power to challenge systemic racism and tell the stories of Indigenous people who have been dehumanised by the criminal justice system. The new judgments are characterised by intersectional perspectives which draw on postcolonial, critical race and whiteness theories. Several scholars have chosen to operate within the parameters of legal doctrine. Some have imagined new truth-telling forums, highlighting the strength and creative resistance of Indigenous people to oppression and exclusion. Others have rejected the possibility that the legal system, which has been integral to settler-colonialism, can ever deliver meaningful justice to Indigenous people.

Historically states have failed to seriously confront violence against women. In response, in many countries women's rights movements have called on the government to prioritize state intervention in cases involving violence between intimate partners, sexual harassment, rape, and sexual assault by both strangers and intimate partners. Those interventions have taken various forms, including the passage of substantive civil and criminal laws governing intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault, and sexual harassment; the development of civil orders of protection; and the introduction of procedures in the criminal legal system to ensure the effective intervention of police and prosecutors. Indeed, many countries have relied upon intervention by the criminal legal system to meet their requirements under international human rights standards that obligate states to prevent, protect from, prosecute, punish, and provide redress for violence. Although states have taken divergent approaches to the passage and implementation of criminal laws and procedures to address violence against women, two things are clear: criminalization is a primary strategy relied upon by most nations, and yet criminalization is not having the desired impact. This collection explores the extent to which nations have adopted criminal legal reforms to address violence against women, the consequences associated with the implementation of those laws and policies, and who bears those consequences most heavily. The chapters examine the need for both more and less criminalization, ask whether we should think differently about criminalization, and explore the tensions that emerge when criminal law, civil law and social policy speak or fail to speak to each other. Drawing on criminalization approaches and recent debates from across the globe, this collection provides a comparative approach to assess the scope, impact of, and alternatives to criminalization in the response to violence against women.

Every year, millions of women across the world turn to the law to help them live free from intimate partner violence. They engage with child protection services and police and apply for civil protection orders. They seek family court orders to keep their children safe from violent fathers, and take special visa pathways to avoid deportation following their separation from an abuser. Women are often driven to interact with the law to counteract their abuser's myriad legal applications against them. While separation may seem like a solution, often the abuse just gets worse. Countless women who have experienced intimate partner violence are enmeshed in overlapping, complex, and often inconsistent legal processes. They have both fleeting and longer-term connections with the legal system. Women, Intimate Partner Violence, and the Law explores how women from many different backgrounds interact with the law in response to intimate partner violence, over time. Drawing on their experiences of seeking help from the law, this book highlights the many failures of the legal system to provide safety for women and their children. The women's stories show how abusers often harness aspects of the legal process to continue their abuse. Heather Douglas reveals women's complex experiences of using law as a response to intimate partner violence. Douglas interviewed women three times over three years to reveal their journey through the legal process. On occasion, the legal system allowed some women closure. However, circular and unexpected outcomes were a common experience. The resulting book showcases the level of endurance, tenacity, and patience it takes women to seek help and receive protection through law. This book shows how the legal system is failing too often to keep women and their children safe and how it might do better.

This book brings together feminist academics and lawyers to present an impressive collection of alternative judgments in a series of Australian legal cases. By re-imagining original legal decisions through a feminist lens, the collection explores the possibilities, limits and implications of feminist approaches to legal decision-making. Each case is accompanied by a brief commentary that places it in legal and historical context and explains what the feminist rewriting does differently to the original case. The cases not only cover topics of long-standing interest to feminist scholars - such as family law, sexual offences and discrimination law - but also areas which have had less attention, including Indigenous sovereignty, constitutional law, immigration, taxation and environmental law. The collection contributes a distinctly Australian perspective to the growing international literature investigating the role of feminist legal theory in judicial decision-making.