Australian Criminal Justice Students as Prospective Case Managers: Exploring Their Client Preferences

Abstract

The effectiveness and sustainability of contemporary criminal justice systems rely upon the knowledge, skills, and professionalism of case managers. However, the preconceptions, expectations and aspirations of criminal justice students as prospective case managers remains largely unexplored. This study examines the client preferences of 120 criminal justice students enrolled in an introductory case management subject at an Australian University between 2018 and 2020. Analysis of their responses to an assessment task which required them to reflect upon which client groups they would most and least prefer to work with reveals strong patterns of preferences but also diverse factors at play in their formulation. These include: the students’ estimations of their ability to relate to different client groups; their assessment of the vulnerability or worth of different client groups; their desire to contribute to positive change; to feel a sense of reward; and their interest and studies in criminal justice.

Keywords:

• Criminal justice students
• case management
• clients
• offender supervision
• attitudes
• aspirations

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Donna King whose experience and insights as a case manager were crucial in the development of this research and the teaching activities relating to it.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 As Wimshurst (2011) has noted Australian tertiary institutions have largely sought to avoid the deep division between criminology and criminal justice evident in the United States. Therefore criminology and others degrees orientated towards or incorporating justice studies commonly feature both theoretical and more practice-based elements.

2 This is not unusual. Indigenous Australians comprise only 1.9 per cent of the domestic higher education student population in Australia, despite making up 3.3 per cent of the total population (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2021).

3 In this paper, the terms Aboriginal Australian and Indigenous Australian are used interchangeably to refer to Australia’s First Nations Peoples. The 2018 client preference exercise listed Aboriginal Australians as this was considered the most recognizable term. Since then, Indigenous Australians has become a more widely acknowledged and used term.

4 In collecting the data, the students have been deidentified by replacing their names with randomly allocated numbers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susanne Davies

Susanne Davies has taught and researched in socio-legal studies and criminology for more than thirty years. Her interest in case management was sparked in late 1990’s when researching women’s imprisonment and post-release mortality. Her publications include Harsh Punishment: International Experiences of Women’s Imprisonment. She is the former Head of the Department of Social Inquiry and past Convenor of the Crime, Justice and Legal Studies Program at La Trobe University, Australia.