Associate Professor Caitlin Hughes

Matthew Flinders Fellow

College of Business, Government and Law

+61 8 74219926

caitlin.hughes@flinders.edu.au

Law & Commerce (322)

GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia

Caitlin Hughes is an Associate Professor in criminology and drug policy and Matthew Flinders Fellow at the Centre for Crime Policy and Research, Flinders University. Caitlin has spent 18 years researching drug and alcohol policy, including 12.5 years at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW, working as part of the Drug Policy Modelling Program - one of the leading drug policy research centres in the world. Having joined Flinders University in July 2019 her research seeks to advance Australian and international drug policy by improving the evidence-base into the effects of different legislative and law enforcement approaches to drug use and supply and working directly with policy makers. Her research focuses on 1) drug laws and drug law reform (including depenalisation, decriminalisation, legalisation), 2) criminal justice policies (including policing and alternatives to arrest) and 3) drug markets, outlining what laws and policies are deployed, how they operate in practice, the impacts of this investment and identifying avenues for more effective responses that can reduce drug-related health, social and criminal justice harms.

Caitlin is also Visiting Fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW and President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy and is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Drug Policy and the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development.

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy (Criminology) - 2007 - University of Melbourne

Bachelor of Arts (Degree with Honours), Bachelor of Science - 2001 - University of Melbourne

Key responsibilities

Higher Degree Research Coordinator - College of Business, Government and Law

Deputy Chair - University Higher Degree Research Committee

Topic coordinator

CRIM3011 Current Issues in Criminal Justice

Supervisory interests

Alcohol and other drugs

Comparative law

Crime policy

Criminal justice

Criminal law

Organised crime

Policing

Public policy

Higher degree by research supervision

Current

Principal supervisor: Evaluating the health, crime and system impacts of the South Australian Police Drug Diversion Initiative (1), Nowhere Noir: Investigating discourses of the abject produced by cross-cultural adaptations of Scandinavian crime drama (1), The evolution of transnational drug trafficking flows and the factors that affect them: A network perspective (1), Illicit drug production and drug trafficking and the drugs-terrorism nexus (1), A comparative analysis of police use of stop and search in Australia and the United Kingdom (1), The disruption and dismantling of OMCGs (1)

Associate supervisor: Re-thinking harm reduction strategies in Sydney’s night-time economy: A cross-national comparative analysis (1), The impacts of stigma on alcohol and other drug use and access to services in regional Victoria and South Australia (1)

Completion

Principal supervisor: Understanding how high-level drug traffickers respond and adapt to changes in supply (1), Promoting compliance, recovery and desistance: comparative case studies of pre-sentence diversion schemes for drug misusing arrestees in Australia and England (1), Investigating displacement effects as a result of the Sydney, NSW alcohol lockout legislation (1), Conflict theory and street-level drug law enforcement: The use of drug detection dogs in NSW 2008 to 2014 (1), What do young people living in New South Wales think of current and alternate approaches of regulating cannabis? (1), The nature and drivers of illicit drug trafficking and production in Myanmar and its future drug policy responses (1), An exploration of the roles, contextual circumstances and motivations of female drug traffickers in Australia (1)

Associate supervisor: The supply and diversion of pharmaceuticals (1), Investigating the utility of indexes for drug policy analysis (1), Women, drugs and anonymous online markets: A secondary analysis of the Global Drug Survey (1), The role of the executive in Australian Commonwealth drug policy following the 1988 Drug Convention (1), Legalising cannabis in Australia - a comparative policy analysis of attitudes to cannabis, stigma and help-seeking in the ACT and NSW (1)

Higher degree by research student achievements

Vivienne Moxham-Hall

Deans Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis - DEC 2019

Shann Hulme

Deans Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis - DEC 2019

Professional engagement

Caitlin Hughes engages extensively with policy makers, law enforcement and health officials from across and outside of Australia, including the Commonwealth Department of Health, the Australian Federal Police, Australian Customs and Border Control, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, NSW Police, Victoria Police, ACT Police, ACT Health Directorate, the Irish Department of Justice and Equality and Department of Health, the British Colombia Police, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. She has been a member of the Australian Civil Society for United Nations Drug Policy since 2019 and attended the 62nd, 63rd, 64th, 65th, 66th United Nations Commission on Narcotics Drug Meetings as part of the Australian civil society delegation (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023). Her work has contributed to many policy and practice reforms, including the expansion of drug diversion programs for use/ possess offenders and the reform of drug trafficking thresholds law “to ensure laws target traffickers not users”.

Caitlin is President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. She is also a member of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (since 2006), the European Society of Criminology (since 2014) and the American Society of Criminology (since 2020).

Expert for media contact

Drugs

Drug laws

Drug policy

Drug trafficking

Festival safety

Available for contact via

+61 8 74219926

caitlin.hughes@flinders.edu.au

Or contact the media team

newsdesk@flinders.edu.au

+61 8 82012092