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Dr Hilde Tubex will take up her recently awarded Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship in the Faculty of Law’s Crime Research Centre on 1st August.

The Future Fellowships scheme aims to attract and retain the best and brightest mid-career researchers. Professorial Fellow and Associate Dean (Research) Professor Michael Gillooly said, “Only a small number of such fellowships are awarded nationally and this award is a substantial coup for UWA, Dr Tubex and the Law School’s Crime Research Centre ”.

Dr Tubex’s project is titled: "Reducing imprisonment rates in Australia: international experiences, marginal populations and a focus on the overrepresentation of indigenous people." It aims to explore the relevance of international experience in dealing with increasing prison numbers and their validity for the Australian situation. A specific focus will be on the imprisonment of minorities and marginalised groups, and to suggest solutions to the problem of hyper-incarceration of the indigenous people. This study will not only enhance the recognition of the distinctive contribution the Australian example can make to an area of scholarship that is of recognised international importance, it will also bring the latest criminological thinking to bear on the analysis of our unique situation and offer a fresh perspective on problems of crime control that are proving resistant to resolution. The purpose of this study is to test the validity of factors influencing imprisonment rates and initiatives that have been trialled in other jurisdictions to decrease prison numbers for the Australian situation. The expected outcome is to identify ways to reduce the prison population, most particularly the over-representation of indigenous people.

Before moving to WA in 2007, Hilde Tubex had been employed as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Criminology at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium) for 15 years. Her fields of expertise are mainly in penological research, especially in international comparative studies. In a series of research projects she worked on such topics as long-term imprisonment, parole, restorative justice, violence in prisons, sex offenders and the organisation and evaluation of welfare and treatment services for prisoners. She was appointed as a scientific expert to the Council of Europe and has been working on a regular basis for them as an expert advisor in the development of recommendations to the Council of Ministers.  Further she was involved in several of their projects for the improvement of penal practice in Central and Eastern Europe.   She was also employed on a part time basis as an advisor on penal policy to the Belgian Minister of Justice.  Additionally she was a substitute assessor on the Belgian Parole Board, and a member of the Central Inspectorate of Prisons.  On arrival in Perth, she joined the Department of Corrective Services, where she has been Team Leader Research and Evaluation for the last four years.