Dr Simone Deegan

Simone was admitted to practise as a barrister and solicitor in the Supreme Court of South Australia in 2004. Her research interests include serious youth offending, repeat incarceration and the prison. She began her legal career at the District Court of South Australia as a Judges Associate and has gone on to work as a Criminal Defence Solicitor with the Legal Services Commission of SA and also in private practise. Simone joined the law school in 2009 as Project Officer on the ARC funded project,Generativity in young male (ex)prisoners: Caring for self, other and future with and beyond prison. This research forms the basis of the book Young Offenders: Crime, Prison & Beyond (Halsey and Deegan, 2015) which was awaded the Australian and New Zealand Society for Criminology (ANZSOC) Margaret Alder Book Prize for it's outstanding contribution to Criminology (2017/2018). Simone's doctorate, The Lives and Adjustment Patterns of Juvenile Lifers (2019) investigated opportunities for life-sentenced juveniles to cope, adjust and mature in prison environments and was awarded the Flinders University Vice Chancellors Medal for Doctoral Thesis Excellence (2020). In 2021, Simone was also awarded the ANZSOC New Scholar Prize for the best publication in Criminology for her work with families of juvenile homicide offenders. Until recently, Simone was also the Principal Advocate for all South Australian children and young people detained in training centres with the South Australian Office of the Guardian for Children and Young People.