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Keywords: Jss

  • AUSTRALIA

    A pause to reflect in the wake of the youth justice storm

    • Julie Edwards
    • 15 March 2017
    6 Comments

    At present the tornado that has raged in youth justice has abated. Disturbing images from Don Dale led to a royal commission in the Northern Territory. In Melbourne, public fears about gang violence, carjackings, robberies and youth detention centre riots were followed by the placing of many young people in an adult facility and a pledge to build a new prison for young offenders. This pause offers time for reflection on the human reality and needs of children who are involved in the justice system.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Family violence needs whole community response

    • Julie Edwards
    • 30 March 2016
    1 Comment

    The royal commission recommends a 'blitz' on rehousing family violence victims stuck in crisis and transitional housing, as well as individualised funding packages to open up access to private rentals for people fleeing violent relationships. Important though it is, it is not enough simply to support the victims of family violence. We also need to prevent family violence from occurring. This requires a strategy for preventing family violence that involves the whole community.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human relationships and efficiency don't mix

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 July 2014
    5 Comments

    The Victorian Government has started to recommission its community sector programs. To simplify administration of community mental health services, it has awarded tenders to large organisations and withdrawn funding from small specialised innovative programs that were effective because of the quality of the relationships they had built up. 

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  • RELIGION

    Politics of remembering

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 June 2013
    2 Comments

    When Polish Jews were herded into the closed Warsaw Ghetto, Chaim Kaplan kept a diary to ensure that 'in our scroll of agony, not one small detail can be omitted'. This kind of remembering is both deeply personal and profoundly public, and invites us to celebrate human freedom. The remembering involved in the collection of information by the United States and Great Britain is of a quite different character.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Legislating to counter grog fuelled violence

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 June 2013
    7 Comments

    The Northern Territory Parliament will soon debate a proposed treatment scheme for up to 800 problem drinkers a year. It will be a case of unprincipled, unworkable lawmaking unless the NT is more attentive to medical, legal and community opinion within its own jurisdiction and 'from down south'. Just because a proposal is novel doesn't mean it's a good idea.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Kids corrupted by criminal treatment

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2013
    9 Comments

    In Australia the child's welfare is trumped by the demands of a justice system focused on containment of risk, and by populist calls to get tough on crime. When offending children are seen through a judicial lens, and justice is seen as retributive, the support society offers them to become responsible adults is fragmented. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    Migrants and big bank theory

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 February 2013
    8 Comments

    There is often a natural antipathy between the financial sector and the community sector. If you give the dog a bone, say the money men, he will only rub it in dirt and bury it. If you give the bank a bone, say the community workers, it will charge you interest on the transaction. But sometimes we are nudged to reconsider our reflexive prejudices.

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  • RELIGION

    Suicide is the new leprosy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 May 2012
    14 Comments

    A common public response to suicide is very similar to earlier attitudes to leprosy. The latter makes invisible people who need to be seen. The former makes silent people who need to speak. A recently published collection of writing by relatives and friends of people who had taken their own lives breaks that silence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NSW and Victoria's 'tough on crime' confusion

    • Michael Mullins
    • 06 June 2011
    7 Comments

    While Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark pushes for tougher treatment of young offenders, his NSW counterpart Greg Smith is looking to Victoria's current 'enlightened' model, which favours early intervention over punishment.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Social welfare good news stories

    • Tony Vinson
    • 25 October 2010
    3 Comments

    The new Jesuit Social Services study Moving from the Edge is not a tale of welfare woe. It is a celebration of lives that have 'come good'. Individuals and families have spoken in a basically human way about their transition from being 'outsiders' to social 'insiders'.

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  • RELIGION

    'Agnostic' priest's social inclusion scepticism

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 August 2008
    9 Comments

    The Government's Social Inclusion Board has commenced work. Provided 'social inclusion' doesn't become a buzzword to cloud discussion about service delivery, it could be a useful means for enhancing human flourishing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The virtue of having a go

    • Michael Mullins
    • 15 May 2007
    2 Comments

    Martin Flanagan of The Age links the sometimes defiant spirit of having a go with “common goodness”. He says this is found in the midst of wars and despair and, most importantly, “the blindness that flows from political and religious ideology”.

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