Harry Blagg

Harry Blagg was Professor of Criminology in the Law School, University of Western Australia from 2013 to 2023. He was inaugural Director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples and Community Justice in the Law School, UWA. He is now Emeritus Professor of Criminology at UWA.

He enjoys a national and international reputation as a leading criminologist specializing in Indigenous people and criminal justice, particularly family and domestic violence, the interaction of Aboriginal and mainstream laws, youth justice, policing, and restorative justice. He has over 25 years’ experience conducting high level research with Aboriginal people across Australia (including urban, rural and remote locations) on justice related issues. From 2001/2006 Harry was Research Director of the West Australian Law Reform Commission’s project: Aboriginal Customary Laws. This project explored whether Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal forms of law can be harmonized and integrated. It was one of the largest studies of the role played by Aboriginal law in maintaining Aboriginal community life in Australia.

Harry led some of the first Aboriginal community engaged research on family violence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which included innovative work focused on the potential for Aboriginal organizations (including community patrols and women’s organizations) to act as First Responders in family violence situations.

He has produced numerous reports and scholarly texts on various aspects of youth justice. In 1992 he developed Western Australia’s first diversionary conferencing system, which became the Juvenile Justice Teams under the YOA 1994.

Recently completed projects include a study to develop Diversionary Pathways for Indigenous youth believed to be FASD in the Kimberley Region of WA, funded by the Criminology Research Council of Australia; an evaluation of integrated and innovative community owned responses to Aboriginal family violence; and a project on the Role of Aboriginal Law and Culture in Responding to Family Violence, both funded by ANROWS (Australia’s Research Organization on Women’s Safety). He has led an ARC funded inquiry into the role of Aboriginal Night Patrols in providing place-based forms of community safety.

He recently completed research for the West Australia Police on reducing the arrest and detention of Aboriginal people, in the wake of a number of unnecessary deaths in custody in WA, and on the reform of prison-based family violence programs for the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal Justice Unit. He is currently working with the Halls Creek Justice Reinvestment Project (Olubud Dugethu) on developing a local youth diversion scheme and holds a Criminology Research Council grant looking at developing therapeutic courts and community led diversion in the West Kimberley. Harry has a strong commitment to the decolonization of relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

He was involved in the development of processes designed to decolonize the UWA Law School and the design of the new Batchelor in Criminology at UWA, introduced in 2021. Many of his scholarly outputs have been concerned with the decolonization of the justice system, including recent books on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and Postcolonial theories.

In his role as Senior Research Fellow and Director of Studies at the Crime Research Centre, University of Western Australia he managed a highly popular Masters of Criminal Justice, including courses on Policing, Indigenous People and Justice, Victims of Crime, and Criminological theories.

He has authored/co-authored 6 books as well as numerous book chapters and articles in peer reviewed international journals.