THE DEFENDANT’S DIARY
Chapter 1) Criminal Convictions for political clout
This paper might be of interest to you if you:
A) Have been a defendant in the criminal legal system or know someone who has.
B) Work in the legal or human services sector
C) Have an interest in crime rates, how/why people come into conflict with the law & what the media doesn’t tell you in crime reporting.
Straight off the bat, I’ll say, it’s not as simple as don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time. Often, people offend without making a conscious or rational decision. Certain early vulnerabilities can raise the risk of criminalisation. Developmental crime prevention focuses on early childhood intervention to lower risks for those more vulnerable to negative outcomes. For example, kids who’ve have a crappy start to life; via abuse, neglect and poverty, have a greater probability of later “offending”. Other groups also have a disproportionate chance of being criminalised. Here in Australia, Aboriginal females are far more likely to serve a custodial sentence than white males (ABS, 2024). I say criminalised because ‘offending’ is a term used by the state. Not all those labelled offenders are factually guilty. Here, I will present testimony about individuals considered criminal by some and examine whether they may be viewed as victims rather than offenders.
The evidence is clear; crime broadly is governed by political agendas. Just watch in the lead up to any election campaign, crime is always central on the agenda (Simon, 2007). Nonetheless, certain arrests, indictments, and convictions hold greater significance than others in the context of political advancement. Bipartisan consensus that sex offenders are monsters serves as a hot button issue for policymakers looking to advance related legislation, and of course their careers. (Levine & Meiners, 2020). The result is arrests that use higher levels of subjectivity compared to other offending categories. Rather than centring public safety, these arrests often function as a statistical box ticking exercise. They appease lobby groups. At the heart of this lies the prosector who has inordinate power over citizens lives with little public oversight into their decision-making process (Simon, 2006).
I’m not an apologist for criminal behaviours. I know firsthand the impact of violent victimisation, the long road to healing, the financial expense incurred for therapy, the effort and time it consumes. There is need for community bonds to overcome barriers to wellbeing, safety and connection. Maintaining employment to enjoy quality of life becomes a challenge. At the same time, I don’t believe that state implemented harm is a solution to harm. Lurking behind the use of state power is always the threat of violence, especially for sexual crimes (Gruber, 2020 & Levine & Meiners).
I once saw a brilliant quote saying…” It’s not your fault what happened to you, but it is your responsibly to fix it”. While it may seem unfair, the public often agrees in cases of harm or crime. Most victims of physical childhood abuse do not seek criminal sanction against their caregivers; they are not encouraged to do so either. There are exceptions though, niches, carve outs (Gruber, 2020). Sex offences are one such exclusion. No matter how much time has elapsed or what punishment is meted out, those ‘guilty’ face a formal and informal regime of punishment. Victims of sex crime are told their ‘life is ruined’, handing them lifelong victimhood status and little incentive to take part in healing modalities. This exemption is called sex exceptionalism, it exists in criminal law, in the community and is embedded in our culture.
This report will explore the trend of sex exceptionalism coupled with the increasing reliance on the criminal legal system to fix a range of public problems. According to Professor Aya Gruber (2021) the criminal legal system is currently outwrought, it is used as a proxy for order and healing while delivering chaos and extreme harm. Gruber (2020) also argues for negative criminal justice reform, a winding back of arrests, indictments and prosecutions as a first line of defence. I concur, through telling my story, maybe you will too.
The defendant’s diary puts a focus on structural factors that contribute to risk of criminalisation rather than focusing too much on individual level factors. A confluence of political, social and economic factors decides who and what gets investigated and prosecuted. I’ll outline specific evidence of high levels of police discretion into who and what to investigate. Again, certain crimes are more prone to investigative & prosecutorial discretion than others. High levels of discretion mean high levels of inequality (Gruber, 2020).
Discourse about offending comes into play too. Certain offences are viewed as more serious or unforgivable than others (Guber, 2020; Levine & Meiners, 2020). Historians of crime such as Foucault (1977) understood the law to be historically bound. The worst thing you could be - once upon a time was a pirate. Now, unless you live near the Gulf of Aden, it’s not a thing. Today, it is widely acknowledged that being designated as a sex offender carries significant social stigma.
But hang on? Who am I to talk about this complex topic? There’s a bunch of great social media resources produced by lawyers and barristers. I follow a few for their views. Some issues are related to procedural matters, while others are associated with political or populist topics. Crucially we have voices of convicted persons who courageously share what it’s like being labelled, locked up and punished permanently. I’m one of those labelled individuals and I’m a woman. Women happen to be the fastest growing prison population. In fact, since 2000 women’s imprisonment has increased by 57% compared to 22% for men (Women Beyond Walls, 2025).
Women and girls expanded presence in the carceral estate is a global phenomenon. On the surface it looks like women are running amok, but minimal excavation reveals the truth about women’s conflict with the law. Poverty and abuse typify the lives of women in prison (Belknap, 2010 & Snider, 2003). Over the past couple of decades, a political agenda characterized by making sure she doesn’t get away with it, has resulted in a punitive approach to female survival, poverty and abuse (Snider, 2003). A principle of Anglo-Australian law is that everyone is to be treated equally before the law. Some argue this approach overlooks structural factors shaping women’s lives.
To illustrate, The Innocence Project has found that 43% of female exonerees were convicted of crimes against children (Innocence Project, 2024). Post conviction analysis of these cases revealed accident, suicides or a fabrication as determinants of the child’s fate. In the real world where crime occurs women face more burden for childcare responsibility. So, it makes sense that women would have elevated risk of conviction for crimes against children. Before you scoff about this being yet another feminist essay, at least read the next paragraph’s first line. You’ve made it this far, hear me out. Men are needed in this conversation. Men have been the most impacted by the war on sex offenders. So far. But the tide is turning.
I’m a feminist but feminism isn’t one thing. Some of my views may seem antifeminist. I’m fine with that. The dominant feminist discourse is middle class carceral feminism. This brand of feminism is characterised by its dependence on the state to deal with sexual and domestic violence (Gruber, 2020). Carceral feminism, is punitive. It aims to achieve gendered justice by confining bad men/actors (Gruber, 2020). I cross examine this brand of feminism! Why have we made strides on the #Metoo issue, to the benefit of elite women, whilst poor women are being locked up in prisons at exponential rates? Hegemonic feminism doesn’t give AF about the well-established fact that females marginalised by status & poverty experience the most lifetime victimisation (Belknapp,2010 & Women Beyond Walls). What if we’re dealing with a gender (sex) and class war?
Cast your mind back to 2017; dazzling celebrities graced gilded magazine covers in the name of #Metoo. Meanwhile women who society considers unworthy of concern, the powerless were being thrown in the pen for their responses to more protracted and arguably more violent crimes. This statement suggests that certain individuals may derive elevated status from being perceived as victims, while others experience increased scrutiny or oppression. The #Metoo movement, ended up advancing state power (Gruber, 2020). I also contend that #Metoo has lessened our compassion for others.
Consider for a moment, Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein once a man who misused power, currently sits in Rikers Island at 73 years of age. He has bone cancer, sciatica, a misdiagnosed tongue infection, has had multiple emergency surgeries, while being denied dental care. Weinstein, like all prisoners is a human being. #Metoo has come at the expense of due process including the right to a fair trial and innocence until proven guilty (Gruber,2020). Due process safeguards put the onus on the state to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt. Remember the state has almost unlimited power and resources to wield against citizens, so it stands to reason they should go to great lengths to prove their case. And the stakes are high- you’re talking about taking away one’s Freedom and as Malcolm X said (1965) “freedom is a prerequisite to peace”. While feminism fronts as a progressive movement, the agenda of bolstering state power through more laws, legislative reforms & surveillance is far from it.
No, I haven’t been to women’s prison, but I was recently defendant in the Supreme Court of Queensland, a process that took 3 years from arrest to conviction to appeal. During that time my life was dominated by the threat of up to 25 years in jail. At the time of my arrest, I was listed as the protected individual on a Domestic Violence (DV) order that was set to remain in effect for several more years. I didn’t take out the order, the police were called to when neighbours heard sobbing and thumping. The man who did the violence strangled, punched &, kicked me. Following this he threatened to kill me if I left the relationship. When I did leave, he stalked me for years, both in person and online.
This part of the story isn’t a bid for sympathy rather it describes the context leading up to my arrest. It also highlights the law’s treatment of violent vs sexual offenders. I’d met this man while training intensively in a sport which I am enthusiastic about, Muay Thai. He had many professional fights; I had none. We discovered we lived close to one another (I was new to the neighbourhood). We’d walk home after training. He was experiencing certain personal challenges, and I provided a supportive and attentive presence. He offered boxing lessons, and I accepted.
Photo of the person named on the DVO & me after training
After the cops took out the DVO and I got out of harm’s way, I started various post graduate qualifications to better understand law, criminal justice and its intersection with gender. While I worked full time in social work, and studied part time, the shadow of violence loomed over me. There was a bit of paper (DVO) saying he (the person who did violence) was not to come within 100 meters. Yet, I’d finish work at the hospital, and he’d pop up near my car, rip the keys out of my hand, demand to drive to a remote location, damage my car. By this stage I knew he was harming his mum and terrorising his entire family.
Wearied & anxious after a long workday, I strode into a local cop shop and said… “I think this man is mentally ill, I want him to get help AND I think he’s going to kill someone”. The male officer blankly stared at me and replied… “Yeah some kill, some don’t…you got evidence of this stalking stuff?” I was determined to be free of control & I felt caged. I funnelled my fear into study. That fear became my fire. Eventually I penned an official letter of complaint to Queensland Police Service (QPS) about their lack of care for both victims of DV and those doing violence (who have high rates of suicide).
A couple of years after I sent the letter of complaint to QPS, I was arrested for things the state framed as a historical crime (21 years old). After the arrest, I got out of the watch house; went back to the place I was couch surfing and turned an assignment in. In a separate chapter I’ll get to how evidence was obtained to get me arrested. Subsequent to my arrest a predictable sequalae of events transpired: I lost my well-paid corporate job, I had to sell my home to pay legal fees (I had a mortgage and no way to pay it), my mental health declined, I lost friends and became homeless. As the cogs of the crime processing machine turned, the resources I needed recover from contemporaneous DV, and its attendant trauma became a distant blur in the rear-view mirror.
When something matters to me, I’m tenacious. While out on bail, I accepted a summer Indigenous (my father is Aboriginal Kombumerri) research scholarship, prior to my final semester before graduation. I chose to focus on women’s imprisonment from a historical perspective up to the present. I finished my master’s degree with a decent GPA. I’d started it with a burning desire, initially to reform criminal justice but now to see the abolition of the prison industrial complex. With my criminal case unresolved, I couldn't use my new qualification or keep paying my student debt. Hell, I was struggling to keep my head above water, but I also started paying attention to things happening around me…
The first thing I noticed was the 2022 Independent Commission of Inquiry (the inquiry) into police service responses to DV. It was front and centre of news in Queensland a year after my arrest. The commission revealed internal issues within QPS. For example, male officers were shown to be sexist towards their female colleges and perpetrators of DV were found within their ranks. Far worse was evidence about police attitudes towards victims of DV. I’ll quote an article published in ABC 14 July 2022, …
“Our organisation (QPS) is very statistics driven, so there’s a lot of pressure on our operational police and ‘the misogyny is just so wild, and that underpins our attitudes to female victim survivors and we’re a male dominated organisation’”.
Katarina Carol, the Police Commissioner fronted the inquiry which revealed widespread racism, sexism and misogyny. Beyond the woke words that steered the investigation was the fact that many women had died due to lack of police follow up. The majority of these women had current DVO’s and had contacted police on several occasions prior to the incidents resulting in their deaths. The inquiry mainly examined how these issues affected female QPS staff. Here I reference Andrea Dworkin’s Right-Wing Women (1983). Dworkin talks about token women; we saw tokens in Barbie movie where Barbie can be astronaut, scientist or Supreme Court Justice. According to Dworkin the token woman is supposed to be accepted by women at the bottom of the heap to say … ‘If only I were smarter, prettier, better I could have been that’. Dworkin asserts that the token female in no way interferes with the all-male club.
I watched the inner workings of the big boys’ club laid bare while simultaneously named as an aggrieved for high risk DV. I had PTSD from the DV, from which I was trying to recover, and new PTSD from being arrested the year prior for things alleged to have happened in the year 1999-2000, police couldn’t say exactly when. With this going on, reliable sources told me that the man, who’d made a complaint against me, was all over social media loudly proclaiming devastating victimhood from a single cause- me! He was yelling that I was a ‘witch and barren’ while live streaming in public places, denigrating sacred places (war memorial) and random people, especially Indigenous females. He would scream abuse at Indigenous women and call them ‘breeders’. He used illicit drugs and performed lewd acts in his live streams.
The complainant’s behaviours included barging into children’s reading time at the library and yelling about how much noise the kids were making. I’d had minimal contact with him over the past twenty years due to his ongoing drug use and rumours in our family that he was becoming violent. While the accuser complained of being homeless and alone, he openly used drugs during his live streams and refused offers of help. At one stage during my criminal matter, the complainant was offered public housing in the inner city but turned it down because the apartment was “too small”. Drug and alcohol rehabilitation placements offered to him were discarded after a couple of days or ignored completely.
I took in this information one evening over the phone as I “snuggled” into my sleeping bag for another night of hypervigilance in my car. Minutes earlier, I’d phoned a DV hotline, citing my current DV order and living circumstances. I’d hoped they might triage me into temporary accommodation. The fatigued hotline lady told me, “We’re full to capacity’ but there’s a bed available in “The Valley”. The Valley was a long drive from where I was currently parked, and incidentally just minutes from the house of the man named on the DV order. It was also within near proximity to the complainant. I made sure my car doors were locked for the umpteenth time, ate a muesli bar and curled up on my blow-up mattress. At about midnight I unfurled myself for a toilet break. I dragged my feet through the bitterly cold night to the nearest arse freezing toilet block. Coming back through the pitch black, I saw a young man also walking to his car. I wondered what lead to his homelessness. Was he affected by a mental health problem, struggling with addiction or did he have a criminal matter pending too? We nodded at one another and disappeared back to the relative sanctuary of our cars.
I often went to the local library in 2022. I’d charge my phone there and get into the warmth. As I scanned data bases for my uni assignments, I paused for snippets of news. My circumstances came together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I took a big picture outline fist. My summer research showed a rise in women's incarceration, with about 80% having experienced male violence. If it were true that there was misogyny problem within QPS how could this not affect who was arrested?
Next, I landed at the more granular. I recalled that in around 2018, news headlines were everywhere about intimate partner homicide. I was learning new things about safety planning at uni. In response to my letter to QPS, they sent a terse reply, telling me they were following protocol and procedure. Coincidence? Was I now being punished for speaking out on behalf of victims or for critiquing the system? I have read articles discussing women's interactions with the law in relation to feminism, describing the carceral turn against women as backlash. I’d certainly been a loud and vocal feminist on my social media pages.
My memories whirled back to around 2019/2020 – I’d gone to a local police station (again) after work one evening. I asked where the body worn camera evidence was for an incident of an assault that had occurred against me by my ex. Here I was at the police station reporting contemporaneous violence. I had credible evidence that the guy named on my DV order was brutally assaulting his new partner. I wanted to prevent that person being harmed. I was told by the female officer… “You don’t want to see him (the perp) in court, do you?” Well, no I didn’t. She more of less told me to go away. Yet here I was under arrest for things that were 20 plus years old and by all objective measures, I was at no risk of harm to anyone.
At the commencement of my master’s study, I had niggling doubts about carceral feminism. I wondered how on earth domestic violence incidents could be fixed by locking men up in cages with other violent men. This irony was evident. Yet to be “safe”, the state’s temporary solution was to put the guy who’d hurt me in jail (he served 3 months). I used this time to make a safety plan & secure my house. While he was in prison, I worried it would worsen his fragile mental state. Our detailed discussions revealed he had an untreated mental illness. I have experience working in mental health services. After he was released from prison, he contacted me to say… “there were heaps of guys in there for DV. When I told them what I did you they said, ‘She probably deserved it’”,”. So, he’d spent three months hanging out with other men with violent ideation, having his savage behaviour confirmed and strengthened. This doesn’t calculate as a solid formula for behavioural change.
In the face of new evidence, one must change their opinion. I’ve come to the firm conclusion that prison can at best temporarily incapacitate a violent offender but can rarely rehabilitate them. I now have evidence that some criminal justice policies intended to protect women have instead been used against certain women. I am a feminist in that I’m interested in studying the life course of marginalised women. I disagree with carceral feminists. Carceral feminists have almost single handedly created moral panic around a type of crime that disproportionality impact women, sex crimes (Gruber, 2020 & Levine & Meiners, 2020).
This moral panic around a particular offending category sees narratives abound about ordinary intimate activity as criminal. The narrative leans on archaic ideas about women’s passivity and patriarchal ideas about rape ruining women. Historically women who were raped were ‘ruined’ only because they were male property (Gruber, 2021). The ‘sex crimes are the worst crimes’ agenda is not very empowering. Characterizing women as 'ruined' after experiencing a sexual offence does not accurately represent the realities faced by many women. And there’s broad continuum of behaviours that are captured under this ever-expanding crime category.
According to Gruber (2020) & Fortino (2021) “sex offender” has become an umbrella term for individuals with a broad scope of culpability. In law, context is key. What are the exculpatory (tending to clear blame) and inculpatory (tending to show blame) factors surrounding the offence? These critical questions appear absent in discourse about sex offending. Everything from public indecency (e.g. skinning dipping) to the horrendously violent is captured under this crime category. The sentences for having pornography depicting a teen, attract almost the same punishment as egregious force against a toddler (Gruber, 2020 & Levine & Meiners, 2020). We all know that sex offenders are subjected to exceptional legal measures with things like the sex offender registry. I was placed on the registry for 6 months due to judicial error and have now been removed from. More on that later.
The mainstream feminist argument is that rape is something men get off lightly with is due to sexist laws. In fact, rape, since the earliest history of Western countries was always a serious crime, yet it was not uniformly enforced. Rather it was selectively enforced in ways that preserved class status, racial supremacy and martial morality (Gruber, 2021). For example, Gruber (2020) points out that in the antebellum South Black men were seen as having voracious appetites & accusations against them reflected this. Black female slaves and later Chinese immigrants who engaged in prostitution were seen as unrapable. The current state of play is business as usual for sex crimes, perhaps with a kind of inversion around who gets targeted for arrest & indictment.
The intent of this series of three papers is not just to tell one story. l plan to use my experience to tell multiple stories. I know that everyone who’s been accused has different experiences. In telling my story maybe you will share yours. Using both an academic and experiential lens, I pull back the curtain on the criminal legal system to expose it’s performative and theatrical nature. It uses oppression as a tool to achieve the appearance of justice while doing profound damage (Belknapp, 2010, Gruber, 2020). State power is a mighty force.
Prisons and jails both in Australia and overseas are full to capacity and beset with vicious violence, suicide & neglect. Here I quote from Johnathan Simon’s Governing through crime (2006), we cannot solve intractable social problems via criminal justice policy. What Simon is saying is that certain prosecutions are a tool for the whims and agendas of corporations & politicians who wish to allay the fears of the public. Fears which do not necessarily reflect the evidence. For example, most researchers, no matter their political persuasion have found that the recidivism (going back to prison again) rate for sex offenders is between 3-6% (Gruber, 2021 & Levine & Meiners, 2020). Drug crime and property crime are well-known offending categories with high rates of recidivism. One recent Swedish study showed property crime is associated with a recidivism rate of 80% within a less than 3 years (Karlsson & Håkansson, 2022).
For defendants ensnared in the criminal legal system oppression and inequality is deepened. The collateral consequences of convictions are far reaching, affecting their families and communities. I can vouch for this firsthand. I came from a childhood background that was prejudicial: one parent working in a blue-collar job, the adversities of being raised by young parents, poverty, addiction and generational trauma. Over 20 plus years I worked my way into the middle class through the great meritocratic struggle. A neoliberal citizen who maximises opportunities. An equal opportunity indictment brought me crashing back to where I came from- reputation in ruins, insurmountable trauma to navigate, issues with housing stability and homelessness, poverty and uncertainty about my future.
Switching to statecraft, prosecutions are costly and resource intensive. Let’s get pragmatic, SBS News Australia published 4 May 2024, in Australia’s Capital Territory (ACT), police only investigate 1 out of 7 cases of child sexual abuse, much less pursue indictment and prosecution. I quote “some of these suspects had serious violent histories…previous charges of CSA & conviction”. Shouldn’t taxpayer funds focus on prosecuting high-risk offenders with multiple victims? I suspect it’s a numbers game for detectives who have to meet key performance indicators (KPI) via quantitative (numbers) data. The police PR machine then report to government. How do you feel about this spectacle of doing the right thing? Does it make you feel safer? And what about other types of crime? I’ve heard reports both in Australia and overseas that its hard-to-get real time crime followed up for robbery and common assault.
To summarise, I’m a woman. That makes me part of the fastest growing prison population. I’m a newly minted convict for a non-contact “sex crime”. I have a Master of Criminology and Criminal justice. My experience is unique, but I share many traits with other criminalised women. And for men/boys who make up the bulk of defendants in historical and real time sex crimes, the unintended or perhaps intended consequences will be all too familiar. The process is the punishment.
I’m here to challenge the dominant narrative that a single event should cause righteous outrage and lead to state violence via criminalisation and incarceration as a solution (Gruber,2020). Criminal law must be the last, not first resort and we should get really clear on the purpose of punishment: is it deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, retribution, restitution? The current penal system warehouses humans with little focus on rehabilitation. Retribution appears to be dominant paradigm in selectively victim valorising society.
There are alternatives to the carceral state. Community based responses to harm, moving from justice as retribution to justice as healing and the end of branding and isolating those who’ve done sexual harm (Levine & Meiners, 2020). While prosectors intentionally create moral distance between those deemed sex offenders and their victims, sometimes, these situations involve two relatively powerless actors (Gruber, 2020). Furthermore, the legal focus on guilt or innocence leave out much of the story, which is often about systemic failings & trauma for everyone (Levine & Meiners, 2020). I’ll talk about alternative models to the criminal legal system later in on. For now, thanks for reading. If this resonates with you, share your thoughts and experiences. If you disagree that’s OK too, counter arguments are how we learn. Two more chapters will be coming soon.
REFERENCES
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2024). Prisoners in Australia. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/prisoners-australia/latest-release.
Belknap, J. (2010). "OFFENDING WOMEN": A DOUBLE ENTENDRE. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 100(3), 1061-1097. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.slq.qld.gov.au/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/offending-women-double-entendre/docview/849016364/se-2
Dworkin, A. (1983). Right-wing women / Andrea Dworkin. Perigee Books.
Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. (1977). Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison. New York :Pantheon Books,
Gruber, A. (2020). The feminist war on crime: the unexpected role of women's liberation in mass incarceration. University of California Press
Karlsson, A., & Håkansson, A. (2022). Crime-specific recidivism in criminal justice clients with substance Use—A cohort study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(13), 7623. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137623
Levine, J., & Meiners, E. R. (2020). The feminist and the sex offender: Confronting sexual harm, ending state violence. Verso Books
Simon, J., & ProQuest. (2006). Governing through crime : how the war on crime transformed American democracy and created a culture of fear / Jonathan Simon. Oxford University Press.
Snider, L. (2003). CONSTITUTING THE PUNISHABLE WOMAN: Atavistic Man Incarcerates Postmodern Woman. The British Journal of Criminology, 43(2), 354–378. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23638858