'My Life in Crime' by Professor Richard Wortley
Date | Tuesday 4 April 2023 |
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Time | 5:45pm |
Presenter | Professor Richard Wortley |
Contact email | events@waikato.ac.nz |
Website | www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/professorial-lecture-by-professor-richard-wortley-tickets-576565762717 |
Series | Hamilton Public Lectures |
Admission Cost | Free |
'My Life In Crime' - by Professor Richard Wortley
My entire professional career has been in the crime field, first as a prison psychologist, then as a researcher and lecturer. My passion is crime prevention – how can we stop crime before it happens? In this presentation, I want to share some of the experiences over the years that have shaped my approach to crime prevention, and some of the research projects in crime prevention with which I have been involved. I want to talk particularly about the prevention of child sexual abuse, both contact offending, and online offending.
The approach to prevention that I take is called situational crime prevention. Situational crime prevention represents a shift in focus from the historical causes of criminality to the immediate causes of crime; from the offender to the offence. The usual question in psychology and criminology about what causes crime is: why did this person grow up to be criminal? What are the biological, developmental and sociological factors that account for their deviance? In situational crime prevention a different question is asked, namely: why did this person commit this crime at this particular time and place? What factors in the immediate environment account for their behaviour? Once we know some of the key situational factors that encourage or enable crime, we can work out ways to change those factors to make crime less likely to happen.
It is sometimes assumed that situational crime prevention might be OK for ‘traditional’ crimes like burglary and robbery, where offenders are making considered choices to commit crime, but is not appropriate for violent and sex crimes, which are seen to be the result of emotional arousal and psychological disorder. My and colleagues’ research on child sexual abuse challenges this assumption. I discuss some of our research that shows that situational factors play a crucial role in child sex offending and that potential offenders can be deterred by changing the situational dynamics that facilitates their behaviour.
This 45-minute public lecture will be held at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, starting at 5.45pm. Opus Bar will be open from 5.00pm.
Free parking is available on campus via Gate 2B, Knighton Road, Hamilton after 4.30pm.
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Professor Richard Wortley has spent his entire professional career – spanning some 45 years – working in the field of crime, as a practitioner, lecturer, and researcher. His first job upon graduating with a degree in psychology in 1976 was as a prison psychologist in New South Wales – not because he had a burning ambition to work with offenders, but because it was the first job he was offered. But once in the role, he became hooked on the problem of crime – what caused it and how we could prevent it.
After 10 years ‘in prison’ Richard was ready for ‘parole’, and – armed with a master’s degree in psychology he had picked up part-time along the way – he obtained a position as lecturer in justice administration at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst NSW, on the promise that he would enrol in a PhD. (Yes, you could do that in those days!) In 1992 and now with his PhD, he moved to the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University (Queensland). He stayed at Griffith for 18 years – including 8 years as Head of School – before moving to the UK in 2010 to take over the Directorship of the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at University College London (UCL). The COVID pandemic brought him back to Australia in 2020.
He joined Te Puna Haumaru, New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science at the University of Waikato in October 2020. He currently holds professorial positions at University College London and the University of Waikato, involving remote work from home and regular campus visits.
Richard’s research interests centre on the role that immediate environments play in criminal behaviour and the implications this has for situational crime prevention. Put another way, he is interested in why and how people commit crime, and how you might stop them, more so than how they might have developed their presumed criminal dispositions. He has a particular interest in the prevention of child sexual exploitation (CSE), both contact and online offending. Richard has more than 150 scholarly publications, including 5 authored/co-authored books, and he been a principal or co-investigator on more than twenty competitive grants. In 2018 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for “significant service to criminology and psychology, through the development of security and crime science education”.