By Garner Clancey, Cecilia Drumore and Laura Metcalfe

The University of Sydney and Youth Justice New South Wales signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in July 2021. This MoU builds on various prior collaborative activities between the two organisations and related work in other jurisdictions. This paper reflects on the progress and challenges of collaboration of this kind. Specifically, there has been tentative progress in engaging non-traditional parts of the university in youth justice projects.

The initial stage of the collaboration highlighted challenges, including structures within the university which can frustrate interdisciplinary work. Time lines, staff turnover and resources also impacted this collaboration. We conclude with an outline of what might be achieved through ongoing collaboration and signal the importance of ongoing research to capture data and insights regarding the nature of this relationship as it develops.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 691. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024.

By Mark Shaw and Kim Thomas

Johannesburg’s western neighbourhoods of Westbury and Eldorado Park have long experienced serious problems derived from the presence of drug gangs and other forms of organized crime, resulting in a cyclical pattern of violence and criminality, followed by backlashes in the form of community protests and state responses. Law enforcement interventions have generally only temporarily quelled the violence before another cycle of gang activity, violence and protests flares up once again. Such continual cycles have been the pattern defining this urban area since the early 1990s. The costs of crime borne by the citizens of western Johannesburg are high and it is essential to reverse the cycle of violence and despair for these communities to thrive. This report focuses principally on gang-engendered violence in the city’s western suburbs of Westbury and Eldorado Park (and, to a lesser extent, Newclare), although other neighbouring urban areas that fall within the Johannesburg metropolitan area are also briefly analyzed. Broadly, in this urban area there have been three cycles of violence, and accompanying periods of protest and responses by community leaders and the state since the start of South Africa’s post-apartheid democratic era in 1994.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2019. 35p.