Digital Commons Network^™

Prisoner Education And Training, And Other Characteristics: Western Australia, July 2005 To June 2010, Margaret Giles, Jacqui Whale

Research outputs 2011

Executive summary

Spending public funds on educating and training prisoners can generate a significant return on investment, because as this report argues, studying in prison can reduce costly recidivism and improve life outcomes for ex-prisoners. What are the costs of recidivism? Let’s start with incarceration. Prisoners cost money - about $110,000 per prisoner a year. With over 4,000 prisoners in WA prisons at any one time and a turnover of 8,000 prisoners per year, incarceration is a costly business. In addition, there are policing and legal costs related to finding, charging and sentencing alleged offenders; as well as costs to …

Everyday Life In The Tourist Zone, Donell J. Holloway, David Holloway

Research outputs 2011

This article makes a case for the everyday while on tour and argues that the ability to continue with everyday routines and social relationships, while at the same time moving through and staying in liminal or atypical zones of tourist locales, is a key part of some kinds of tourist experience. Based on ethnographic field research with grey nomads (retirees who take extended tours of Australia in caravans and motorhomes) everyday life while on tour is examined, specifically the overlap and intersection between the out-of-the-ordinary “tourist zone” and the ordinariness of the “everyday zone.”

Review Of Indigenous Offender Health [Journal Article], Jocelyn Grace, Ineke Krom, Caitlin Maling, Tony Butler, Richard Midford

Research outputs 2011

This review provides an overview of health issues facing the Indigenous offender population, including some of the social and historical factors relevant to Indigenous health and incarceration. In doing so, it is important to first understand how Indigenous people conceptualise health. Health as it is understood in western society is a fairly discrete category, which differs from the traditional Indigenous perspective of health as holistic [1]. This is made explicit in the 1989 National Aboriginal health strategy that states 'health to Aboriginal peoples is a matter of determining all aspects of their life, including control over their physical environment, of …

Prescription Drug Use Among Detainees: Prevalence, Sources And Links To Crime, Catherine Mcgregor, Natalie Gately, Jennifer Fleming

Research outputs 2011

Concern regarding the diversion and non-medical use of prescription pharmaceuticals continues to grow as anecdotal evidence and other research points to a sizeable increase in the illegal market for such drugs. Estimating the prevalence of illegal use and understanding how pharmaceutical drugs come to be traded in the illegal drug market remain key research priorities for policymakers and practitioners in both the public health and law enforcement sectors. This report is the first of its kind in Australia to examine the self-reported use of illicit pharmaceuticals among a sample of police detainees surveyed as part of the Australian Institute of …

Anthoethnography: Emerging Research Into The Culture Of Flora, Aesthetic Experience Of Plants, And The Wildflower Tourism Of The Future, John C. Ryan

Research outputs 2011

How does anthoethnography contribute to the development of understandings of aesthetic experiences of wild plants and wildflower tourism? As exemplified by the quintessentially aesthetic industry of wildflower tourism, the culture of flora represents diverse engagements between people and plants. Such complex engagements offer further avenues for research. The critical methodology of anthoethnography has been one such approach to circumscribing the values, practices and rhetoric of wildflower tourism. Interviews have revealed perceptual phenomena such as the orchid and everlasting effects as two counterpoised examples of the differences between visual aesthetic values occurring in the region. For appreciators such as Tinker, botanical …

Selling Sin: How Culture Influences The Sale Of Firearm Suppressors In Australia And New Zealand, Martin Maccarthy, Martin O'Neill, Helen Cripps

Research outputs 2011

This paper is a summary of a 2011 academic study commissioned by the New South Wales Government (Game Council) investigating the possible legalizing of firearm sound moderators for hunting and shooting. The study examined the pragmatic advantages and disadvantages of this product in the event it could be made available to the general public in Australia. A comparison between Australia and New Zealand vis-à-vis public access to sound moderators highlights not only the opposite ends of the continuum adopted by two similar countries, but also the arbitrary nature of how attitudes influence product acceptability and availability. Advantages of de-criminalisation in …

Family Systems And Mental Health Issues: A Resilience Approach, Lynne Cohen, Catherine Ferguson, Craig Harms, Julie Ann Pooley, Stuart Tomlinson

Research outputs 2011

In many cases the consumers of mental health information and support are the families of mental health sufferers. The aim of the project was to understand resilience in people who live with or support a family member with a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness. Participants were 15 carers (one male, 14 female). Semi-structured interviews were transcribed and analysed using content analysis. Eight recurring themes emerged which indicated the challenges the carers faced and provided indications of the positive and negative personal, family and social factors that impacted on their lives. These themes were 'Getting to CLAN WA', 'Accessing help including …

Segmenting Chinese Outbound Tourists By Perceived Constraints, Mimi Li, Hanqin Zhang, Iris Mao, Clare Deng

Research outputs 2011

This study examines travel constraints experienced by Chinese outbound tourists. Four constraint factors are identified from visitor data collected in 2006: structural constraint, cultural constraint, information constraint, and knowledge constraint. Information constraint is identified as a factor unique to outbound tourists from China. Among the four constraint factors, structural constraint is the most dominant. Four clusters of visitors are therefore identified: culturally constrained, structurally constrained, absence of sufficient information, and knowledge constrained. The four clusters are distinct in terms of their destination loyalty. The characteristics of each segment are given, and the practical implications of the findings are discussed.