“Trauma-informed Criminal Justice”: Read all about it.

(Reposted from katherinemclachlan.com)

Read all about it. Why, you ask? Well, I have been fascinated with why people commit crimes since childhood, reading true crime books and studying crime scene photos by torchlight under my quilt. Later, I studied law and psychology to become a criminal profiler. I started working as an Intelligence Analyst in the criminal justice system in 2001. In this role, I examined offending patterns in reported sexual assaults. During that time, I worked with an FBI-trained profiler, and she was clear that profiling was not a viable career path in Australia. Over the following decade, I worked in various criminal and social justice public sector roles.

Trauma-informed practice

In 2014, as a Board Member and then Manager of Quality and Research at the Victim Support Service in Adelaide, I first heard the term “trauma-informed”. While the service claimed the phrase, social workers could not clearly explain it. It seemed that they thought it just meant doing a good job. Soon after, I was appointed to the Parole Board of SA in 2015 as a victim advocate. It was in this role that I began to understand the significance of trauma as a precursor to offending.

Trauma in the lives of people who offend

As a Parole Board member, I have interviewed more than 1,000 adults. The people I speak with are not homogenous. But there is a large cohort of people who have been convicted of many offences: drug offences, property offences, driving offences and violent offences. They often report traumatic childhoods.

Women commonly have a history of childhood sexual abuse and abuse within domestic/intimate relationships. Men are often raised in households without father figures; their childhoods are characterised by abuse, neglect, drug use and domestic abuse perpetrated by a series of ‘stepfathers’. Many individuals used drugs as children and disengaged from school. They have had contact with the child protection and youth justice systems. Some are graduates of the youth justice system, known to me from my work years before. This highlighted the failure of government agencies—child protection, education, health, human services, police, and correctional services—to break the cycle of disadvantage and offending effectively.

I learned that people who continue to offend into adulthood regularly exhibit manifestations of complex trauma. So this meant they could not control their impulses and found it challenging to regulate their emotions, make rational decisions or deal with the repeated adversity plaguing their lives. Drugs sometimes offer a way of coping with or escaping reality. Many of these individuals return repeatedly to be managed by Corrections. This was often due to re-offending or breaching justice conditions by continuing to use drugs, absconding, or ceasing to report. Unresolved trauma was prevalent in the lives of people who offend. This reflected their parents’ lives and their children’s lives. It led me to question how we were responding.

My book, “Trauma-informed Criminal Justice”. Read all about it.

My book about trauma-informed criminal justice was published in May 2024. You can now read all about it. I have previously posted about it in this blog. It focuses on my PhD research regarding trauma-informed sentencing. But more than that, the book also draws from my work since then. I consider trauma-informed criminal justice at all stages of the justice process. I also focus on police and corrections and people who have offended, are victims, and work in the system. This book is for students, academics, practitioners and “pracademics” like me.

My book asks: what if we realise that what has happened to people in the past can impact their functioning and (criminal) behaviour? What if we recognise how trauma might relate to offending and respond in a way that avoids re-traumatisation for everyone involved? What if we focus on rebuilding relationships and connections through compassionate practices?