By Lisa Featherstone -  Cassandra Byrnes .· Jenny Maturi -  Kiara Minto · Renée Mickelburgh - Paige Donaghy  

This open access book examines the ways that consent operates in contemporary culture, suggesting it is a useful starting point to respectful relationships. This work, however, seeks to delve deeper, into the more complicated aspects of sexual consent. It examines the ways meaningful consent is difficult, if not impossible, in relationships that involve intimate partner violence or family violence. It considers the way vulnerable communities need access to information on consent. It highlights the difficulties of consent and reproductive rights, including the use (and abuse) of contraception and abortion. Finally, it considers the ways that young women are reshaping narratives of sexual assault and consent, as active agents both online and offline. Though this work considers victimisation, it also pays careful attention to the ways vulnerable groups take up their rights and understand and practice consent in meaningful ways.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2024. 138p.

By Clarissa

The Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) programme uses Action Research (AR) to understand the dynamics which drive the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), and to generate participatory innovations which help to shift these underlying dynamics and mitigate their worst effects. Through 13 Action Research Groups (ARGs) in Bangladesh and 12 groups in Nepal, the programme is generating a rich understanding – particularly through children’s lived experiences – of the complex underlying drivers of harmful work and working children and their employers are themselves defining, piloting and evaluating their innovative actions that aim to increase children’s options to avoid WFCL.  

Bangladesh Action Research Group 13 Brighton: Institute of Development Studies

By Jason Payne and Anthony Morgan

In this study we used criminal history data for three birth cohorts in New South Wales to estimate the prevalence of recorded family and domestic violence offending. Using an accelerated longitudinal design, we estimate that 6.3 percent of people born in New South Wales had been proceeded against by police for a family and domestic violence offence by age 37. The rate was significantly higher for men: 9.6 percent of men— one in 10—had been proceeded against for a family and domestic violence offence, compared with 3.0 percent of women (one in 33). Overall, 1.2 percent of people born in New South Wales were responsible for more than 50 percent of recorded family and domestic violence offences. Further, family and domestic violence offenders accounted for nearly half of all recorded offences by people in the birth cohort. This is the first estimate of the prevalence of recorded family and domestic violence offending in a population sample in Australia. This is an important step towards increasing the visibility of family and domestic violence perpetrators.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 701. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024. 18p.