Real-life cases of Australian guardians

The role of ordinary people in crime prevention was explored at the first Australasian Conference of Undergraduate Research in Sydney recently.

Masters of Criminology and Criminal Justice student Zarina Vakhitova spoke about her research into the real life cases of guardians who have helped prevent crime.

“We looked at cases of ordinary people intervening in crimes in progress to identify patterns in the individual characteristics of everyone involved in the crime event, from guardians, victims and offenders, to the types of crimes and the situational characteristics of incidents of intervention,” said Ms Vakhitova.

She said the results showed guardians played a significant role in helping control crime.

Her research was part of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice’s Criminology Undergraduate Research Internship Program and was supervised by Dr Danielle Reynald.

The one day conference included poster presentations and spoken papers by undergraduate students from all disciplines across Australasia.

“The research internship program offers students a chance to participate in the cutting edge research conducted at the School, and is just one of the extra activities we offer students,” said Head of School Associate Professor Janet Ransley.

“We were delighted to support Zarina in sharing her research with an Australia-wide audience”.