Associate Professor Margaret Camilleri

Position: Associate Professor
Discipline: Criminology and Criminal Justice
Location: Mount Helen Campus, Room H242 
Phone: 5327 6947
Email: m.camilleri@federation.edu.au
ORCID: 0000-0002-8603-6033

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy - University of Ballarat, 2010
Master of Social Science (Social Policy) - RMIT University
Graduate Diploma (Community Development) - RMIT University
Bachelor of Arts (Multicultural Studies) - RMIT University

Teaching

Course(s)

Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Units

  • Policing (CRJUS 2474)
  • Victims of Crime (CRJUS2476 and CRJUS3478)
  • Human Rights: Conventions to Practice (CRJUS2400)
  • Crime to Punishment (CRJUS1285)
  • Crime: Theory and Practice (CRJUS1283)
  • Explanations of Crime (CRJUS1287)
  • Comparative Criminal Justice (CRJUS2471)
  • Policing in Practice (CRJUS2474)
  • Australian Courts in an International Context (CRJUS2100)
  • Punishment, Penalty and Rehabilitation (CRJUS 2300)
  • Work Integrated Learning (CRJUS 2305) and (CRJUS 3204)

Biography

During her career, Marg has worked in a range of justice related positions, including in Community Legal Centres, the Victoria Law Foundation and as Senior Policy and Research Officer for the Department of Justice and Regulation in Victoria. During this time Marg has worked collaboratively with numerous justice agencies in Victoria and nationally. Her work developing policies, business cases and conducting research in the area of access to justice and victim/witness support needs has provided Marg with a comprehensive knowledge of the criminal justice system and processes.

Although in career terms Marg’s work as an academic has been relatively recent, her commitment and experience as an advocate commenced prior to entering academia. Throughout this period and more recently, the aim of her work, as an academic and advocate, has been to make salient the experiences of marginalised groups in the community who are the recipients of inequitable treatment by police and the broader justice system. In doing so, her work seeks to encourage and contribute to debate and identify opportunities for reform.

Marg is a member of the national Project Advisory Group to inform and guide the next phase of work to stop violence against women and girls with disabilities. The national Project Advisory Group, of which Marg was one of the inaugural members, was formed in 2020 by Our Watch and Women with Disabilities Victoria, who have collaborated on the project ‘Changing the landscape’ https://www.ourwatch.org.au/resource/changing-the-landscape/ which was launched in 2022. The project has recently received additional funding to develop the next phase, which includes informing a federal government action plan.

Marg has joined the international expert panel Validity Foundation's Expert Panel on Access to Justice. Validity is an international non-governmental human rights organisation that uses legal strategies to promote, protect and defend the human rights of people with mental disabilities worldwide. Marg will join an international expert panel to provide guidance on the “Enabling inclusion and access to justice for defendants with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities” project. (ENABLE) is an EU co-funded project focused on promoting access to justice and fairer criminal proceedings for defendants with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in 8 EU countries – Bulgaria, Czechia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Portugal, and Spain.

Areas of expertise

Marg’s research areas of interest were influenced by my work as an advocate, and in policy and research in a range of justice related positions. Social justice is the overarching theme which brings the various threads of her research areas together. Marg’s research has three foci: 1. To improve access to justice for groups in the community who are marginalised and to whom the justice system struggles to respond; 2. To make salient the victimisation and recovery experiences of crime victims more broadly, and in particular those whose voices are seldom heard; and 3. To improve system responses to marginalised groups either due to age, gender, mental health and disability.

  • Access to justice, namely the experiences of crime victims in the criminal justice system from report, investigation and at court. Informed by my PhD, this research comprises several themes, including to better understand the factors which inform police decision making about reports made by crime victims with disability and the generalised assumptions of disability which permeate through the justice system, and which inform the justice system’s responses to victims of crime with disability. I am interested to understand the impact of intersectionality of gendered crimes, such as family violence and sexual assault, and disability on access to justice.
  • Understanding the role of place in accessing justice. Disability combined with place appears to negatively influence access to justice, particularly when the victim has a cognitive impairment (mental illness, ABI or psycho-social impairments) or is nonverbal. In 2019 my research into the experiences with the justice system by people who have complex communication needs received funding from the Victorian Legal Services Board and a subsequent article, ‘Disabled in Rural Victoria: Exploring the intersection of victimisation, disability and rurality on access to justice’, was published in the International Journal of Rural Criminology.
  • Rural Criminology exploring the added intersectional dimension of rurality and the experiences of victims of crime, services and police in navigating the shared space and the socio-cultural dynamics of remote, rural and regional communities.
  • Systemic justice issues - Considering the role of structural and systemic response to various groups in society and how such systems can perpetuate inequity and injustice. Such systems serve to criminalise groups such as young people or perpetuate myths and misconceptions about people with disabilities, the effect of which is to exclude from society.

Research interests

  • Access to justice
  • Critical criminology
  • Victimology
  • Criminalisation of young people
  • Justice system responses to marginalised groups
  • Rural criminology
  • Experiences of people with disabilities of the justice system
  • Justice system responses to family violence and sexual assault
  • Police decision making
  • Teaching criminal justice – trauma informed pedagogy

Supervision

Doctoral students

  • Jennifer Nichols – Women's experiences of health care in the prison system in Victoria: do they align with through-care principles and human rights framework? – Principal Supervisor
  • Juhi Pandya –  White Collar Crime – Fraud – Principal Supervisor
  • Kerrie Bryant – Young peoples’ perspectives on youth justice interventions. – Principal Supervisor
  • Lesley Cooper – The Potential of the Clemente Transformative Learning Approach to Empower Students who Experience Coercive Control in Family Violence – Principal Supervisor
  • Kay Lancefield – Early intervention to reduce young peoples’ contact with the criminal justice system – Principal Supervisor (completed)
  • Gerry Skene – Teaching with difference: barriers and enablers for teachers with impairments in professional roles – Associate Supervisor (completed)
  • Lauren Irvine – Women’s lived experience of their partner’s referral, to a men’s behaviour change program – Associate Supervisor (completed)

Completed honours projects

  • Jennifer Martin – ‘Women’s health Care experiences in Victorian Prisons’ – submitted 2018
  • Lesley Cooper – ‘Is there potential for a transformative education approach to contribute to desistance from offending by adolescents’? – submitted 2019
  • Peter Hearn – ‘Australian Newspapers’ Portrayal of the Martin Place Siege’ – submitted 2020

Grants

Project: Evaluation - Goldfields Educator’ (GE) Tailored Education for Youth Crime Prevention
Role: Chief Investigator
Funder: Federal Crime Prevention Grants - Berry Street - BYCPG
Value: $29,000
Duration: 2022- 2024

Project: Central Highlands Health Justice Partnership for Youth
Role: Principal Investigator
Funder: Legal Services Board + Commissioner
Value: $260,000
Duration: February 2014 to 2019

Project: To explore the requirements of people with complex communication needs when interacting with the criminal and civil justice system.
Role: Principal Investigator
Funder: Legal Services Board + Commissioner
Value: $57,270
Duration: October 2016 to December 2018

Project: Gateways to social inclusion: enablers and barriers for young people in accessing meaningful recreational activities
Role: Principal Investigator
Funder: Berry Street - BYCPG
Value: $11,911
Duration: 2022

Project: Lived Experiences of participants in the MAST program.
Role: Principal Investigator
Funder: Ballarat Community Health on behalf of Ballarat Youth Crime Prevention
Value: $11,353
Duration: February 2020 to May 2021

Project: Building health justice for young people in the Central Highlands Region
Role: Principal Investigator
Funder: Victoria Law Foundation (through Youth Law)
Value: $5,000
Duration: February 2019 to March 2021

Publications

Publications

Ollerenshaw. A & Camilleri. M. (2023) A Health Justice Partnership for young people: Strategies for program promotion of young people and youth workers. Australian Journal of Public Health  https://www.publish.csiro.au/py/fulltext/PY2226

Camilleri, M. (2022). Barriers to acceptance of evidence: reports of sexual assault made by adults with cognitive impairment and CCN. Precedence.  Issue 72 October. Australian Lawyers Association

Camilleri. M. (2019). Disabled in Rural Victoria: Exploring the intersection of victimisation, disability and rurality on access to justice. International Journal of Rural Criminology

Ollerenshaw. A & Camilleri. M (April, 2017) Health Justice Partnerships: Initial insights into the delivery of an integrated health and legal service for youth in regional Victoria. Journal of Rural and Remote Health

Books

Camilleri, M, & Harkness, A. (eds) (2023). Australian Courts: Controversies, Challenges and Change. Palgrave. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/australian-courts-marg-camilleri/1142331846

Chapters

Camilleri. M. (2023). Victims with disabilities in rural areas. In R. Hale and A. Harkness (Eds.), Rural victims of crime: Representations, realities and responses. London: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Rural-Victims-of-Crime-Representations-Realities-and-Responses/Hale-Harkness/p/book/9780367677633

Ellis, S & Camilleri, M. (2023). Prosecutions in the summary jurisdiction. In Camilleri, M, & Harkness, A. (eds). Australian Courts: Controversies, Challenges and Change. Palgrave.

Camilleri, M. (2023). Victims Participatory Rights. In Camilleri, M, & Harkness, A. (eds). Australian Courts: Controversies, Challenges and Change. Palgrave.

Camilleri, M & Harkness, A. (2023). Context and controversies of Australian Courts. In Camilleri, M, & Harkness, A (eds). Australian Courts: Controversies, Challenges and Change. Palgrave.

Camilleri, M & Harkness, A. (2023). Challenging court landscapes and opportunities for change. In Camilleri, M, & Harkness, A (eds). Australian Courts: Controversies, Challenges and Change. Palgrave.

Reference entry

Camilleri, M. (2022). People with disabilities. In A. Harkness, J. R. Peterson, M. Bowden, C. Pedersen & J. F. Donnermeyer (eds.), The encyclopedia of rural crime. Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-encyclopedia-of-rural-crime

Refereed conference proceedings

Camilleri, M (2008) Enabling Justice – Paper presented at the National Victims of Crime Conference University of Adelaide, 23-24 September 2008

Reports

Camilleri. M. (2022). Gateways to social inclusion: enablers and barriers for young people in accessing meaningful recreational activities. Ballarat Youth Crime Prevention Partnership Accountability and Governance Group (PAGG) for the Ballarat Youth Crime Prevention (YCP) Project

Camilleri. M (2020). Lived Experiences of participants in the MAST program. Evaluation report of the Mufti Agency Support Team (MAST), This evaluation was commissioned by the Ballarat Youth Crime Prevention Partnership Accountability and Governance Group (PAGG) for the Ballarat Youth Crime Prevention (YCP) Project.

Camilleri. M & Pedersen (2019) Hear Us: The experience of persons with Complex Communication Needs in Accessing Justice. Federation University

Camilleri. M, Ollerenshaw. A., Corbett. J., Taylor. M and Tania Burrows (2018) Central Highlands Health Justice Partnership: Evaluation Report. Victorian Legal Services Board

Victims Support Agency (2013) Information and support needs of victims and witnesses in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria. Department of Justice Victoria

Sugden N. and Camilleri, M., (2011) Review of the National Coronial Information System, Department of Justice Victoria

Camilleri. M. (2010) 'Disabled Justice: Why reports of sexual assault made by adults with cognitive impairment fail to proceed through the justice system. PhD University of Ballarat

Goodfellow, J & Camilleri, M (2003) Beyond Belief - Beyond Justice: The difficulties for victim/survivors with disabilities when reporting sexual assault and seeking justice, Disability Discrimination Legal Service

Associations

  • World Society of Victimology
  • Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology
  • International Society of Rural Criminology