Award-winning criminologist Dr Simone Deegan is determined to understand why people commit crimes. We caught up with Simone to congratulate her on a recent award win, and learned why she is especially proud of her work with juvenile offenders.

What is your role and what does your work focus on?

I’m a lecturer and researcher at Flinders University, and my area of expertise is juvenile offending, impacts of custodial/care settings and life-course cumulative disadvantage. I’m also particularly interested in homicide and serious offending.

My research, which is infused with a working knowledge of the law, explores the attitudes of children and young people towards crime, incarceration, family, work, education and intervention programs to explore the complex personal and situational factors that promote and derail the desistance process.

What journey brought you to this point in your career?

I’ve always been interested in social justice and criminal offending, so I thought I’d be a lawyer. However, the more I practiced law, the more I needed to look deeply at the upstream causes of clients offending rather than just putting a band-aid on their current issue – then seeing them when they offended again. Someone suggested I’d be a good psychologist, so I kind of combined the two areas by going into criminology.

As the previous Principal Advocate for all South Australian children and young people detained in training centres, my work prioritises the development of a youth engagement approach to address the range of disconnections – from kin, culture, community, and country – that propel youth towards the adult corrections system. While it’s critical to have a detailed knowledge of strategic and applied youth justice policy and practice issues, young people are experts in their lives and are often best placed to suggest solutions to government about the issues that affect them and their communities.

What is something you love most about your work?

I’m interested in people’s stories in general, understanding what it means to be human and the themes that occur and reoccur in certain situations. I love continuing to learn new things all the time, and to collaborate with people from other fields, to get a more complete picture of a problem.

What is something you would like people to know about your role?

It can be assumed that anyone who speaks to people who commit serious crimes is automatically looking to excuse it – but the role is to explain it. This can inform how we respond to crimes and, more importantly, how we try to prevent it.

What is something you are most proud of?

I’m really proud of the work I did with juveniles sentenced to life for homicide offending in South Australia, as it was the first project of its kind in Australia. The fact that 100% of the potential participants I approached agreed to take part was an amazing achievement – especially that a particularly demonised group of people had such faith in me and the research. To then win awards for this research was the cherry on top.

How do you like to relax or spend your spare time?

There can be some very stressful aspects of criminological research, and I’m a very feeling person so these things concern me. In this field, you have to learn to detach. I can help explain the themes of a case or cases, but I try not to be invested in the outcome because that’s beyond me. I have no control.

The one thing that enables me to detach and get away from it all is running and gym work, which I do religiously. I also make time for family, friends and activities.