Darren Palmer
Associate Professor
School of History Heritage and Society
Deakin University
Ian Warren
Senior Lecturer
School of History Heritage and Society
Deakin University
Thursday, November 11th
12:30 pm to 1:30pm
Mackintosh-Corry Hall, Room D411
This presentation discusses the intersections between a brutal rape, a regional Australian newspaper's 'outrage' at the failure to combat alcohol-related violence and the adoption of a novel surveillance technology as the key solution to improving public safety in the night-time economy. Focusing on the regional centre of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, this case study reinforces key trends in the literature on signal crime and formal initiatives aimed at providing reassurances of community safety. The media's initial discourses of outrage at the brutal signal event encouraged community support for the introduction of computerized ID scanning to increase the level of surveillance within the local nightclub precinct. The ongoing campaign following the signal crime juxtaposed concerns over the limits of the existing CCTV system against a renewed faith in digital ID scanning as a viable yet untested harm reduction initiative.
The Surveillance Studies Centre
c/o David Murakami Wood
Department of Criminology
University of Ottawa
Canada