Dr Simone Deegan has been awarded the New Scholar Prize in 2021.
As an early career researcher, I am honoured to be awarded with the New Scholar Prize for my article, ‘The Meaning of Murder: Family members in the lives of juvenile homicide offenders’. The article focuses on the family members (mothers, fathers, siblings, and grandparents) of young people under the age of 18 who were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Published in the British Journal of Criminology, it examines their experiences leading up to the offending, after the young person was arrested, through the court process, and across the young person’s life sentence.
The research is part of a larger project that started with my PhD (The lives and adjustment patterns of juvenile lifers), examining how young people became involved in a murder and how they coped through their life sentence. As a part of that, I wanted to interview family members to get their view on the reasons for the offending and the level of commitment they have for supporting the young person in prison and beyond.
The current paper focuses on how family members confront the precise nature of their child’s criminality while simultaneously defending themselves against a series of attacks from a variety of intra- and extra-familial sources. A major conclusion of the article is that murderers’ relatives disappear into an eternal vortex of guilt, shame and anger with little, if any, formal or informal support as a means to manage or recover from the debilitating stigma and strain. Other key difficulties included maintaining a visiting schedule and providing financial support to the prisoner, while taking care of other dependents, like siblings, and being able to maintain their employment and social lives.
Since a lot of the young people from my initial research have recently been released, in future I would like to look into their longer-term trajectory – whether some sort of offending remains, or if they successfully reintegrate back into society. For example, if they find employment, have normal relationships, if they mature “normally” or whether progress came to a crunching halt when they went into prison. I would also like to interview their family members again and see how that next phase looks for them.
I am incredibly grateful to the panel of this award and to ANZSOC for encouraging and supporting early-career researchers.
