University of Sydney formalises crime-fighting govt partnership

After years of fruitful collaboration, the University of Sydney has formalised its valuable partnership with the Australian Institute of Criminology, expanding on projects for joint research groups, skills exchange, and innovative strategies to tackle crime in Australia.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the university and the government agency was signed on Wednesday by Sydney’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Duncan Ivison and AIC Director Michael Phelan.

Deputy Director of Sydney’s very own Institute of Criminology, Dr Garner Clancey, was also there to mark the occasion.

“We have been delighted to collaborate with the Australian Institute of Criminology and see our Memorandum of Understanding with the AIC as an opportunity to really expand our joint activities,” he said in a statement.

The pair have been working together for years, combining their joint expertise to keep Australia’s crime policy up to date and effective.

“There is real potential to apply some novel solutions being developed at Sydney University to crime problems that the AIC is researching,” Clancey added.

Past projects between the two cover a whole range of forms. They have jointedly hosted international visitors in the field, with more planned in the future.

They have also shared experience to train the next generation of criminology specialists. The AIC has taken on interns from Sydney’s Institute of Criminology PhD programme. On top of that, they have hosted university research groups and had both psychology and law research papers published in the AIC Trends and Issues publication.

There are plans to expand the partnership with joint lectures and conferences.

“This partnership represents an excellent opportunity to transform criminal justice policy and practice,” said Sydney’s Ivison.

“The reciprocal skills exchange will advance the aims of crime reduction and justice promotion.”

To aid in this mission to tackle crime in Australia and implement effective policy, the partnership is looking to new tools and researching their benefits. Areas such as data science, forensic psychology, neuroscience, and accounting will be applied to crime prevention ideas.

Phelan said that the memorandum“demonstrates the commitment between government agencies and universities to undertake, fund and disseminate policy-relevant research of national significance.”