Paul Bleakley, Ph.D.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, University of New England
Master of Arts (English), University of New England
Master of History, University of New England
Master of Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism
Graduate Diploma of Education, English/History, Griffith University
Bachelor of Journalism, Politics, Griffith University

About Paul

Dr. Paul Bleakley is an Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice with an expertise in policing, corruption and abuse studies. He has a particular focus on historical criminology, and especially the use of historical research methods to examine police corruption and cold case crimes. Dr. Bleakley has written two books on this subject, Under a Bad Sun: Police, Politics and Corruption in Australia (2021) and Policing Child Sexual Abuse (2022). He has published his research in a range of leading journals such as Criminology & Criminal Justice, Critical Criminology, Deviant Behavior, Policing, and Criminal Justice Studies. Dr. Bleakley's research spans across many aspects of law enforcement culture and practice, with an emphasis on anti-corruption, police ethics, and reform. He is also very active in the field of historical criminology, serving on the steering committee of the Australian and New Zealand Historical Criminology Network and as current Vice Chair of the American Society of Criminology's Division of Historical Criminology (DHC).

Aside from this, Dr. Bleakley also has a research interest in the policing of stalking, and has worked in conjunction with police organizations in the United Kingdom to evaluate a pilot stalking screening tool designed to enhance responses to stalking behavior. He is also currently working on a research project funded by the Tech Coalition and End Violence Against Children (EVAC), investigating the role of online content moderators in protecting the community from illicit content (such as child sexual abuse material), and developing strategies to improve the conditions that these private content moderators work under, with the goal of avoiding secondary trauma. He is working on this project in association with the Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies, based at Middlesex University, London.

Selected Publications
Books

Bleakley, P. (2022) Policing Child Sexual Abuse: Failure, Corruption and Reform in Queensland (Routledge, Abingdon).

Bleakley, P. (2021) Under a Bad Sun: Police, Politics and Corruption in Australia (Michigan State University Press, East Lansing).

Articles

Bleakley, P. (2022) Applying collaborative police-practitioner models with fidelity in the management of public-figure oriented fixation, Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-022-09524-8.

Bleakley, P., Frost, S., Bradbury, P., Short, E., and Martellozzo, E. (2022) The right tool for the job: Evaluating police experiences of a pilot tool for responding to stalking, Policing: A Jour nal of Policy and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paac022.

Bleakley, P. (2021) The fight to remain compliant: Public sentiment, pandemic and policing the second 2020 Victorian lockdown, Journal of Contemporary Crime, Harm, and Ethics, 1 (1), 23-44.

Bleakley, P. (2021) Cleansing and corridors: assessing the state (and future) of human source management in Australia, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, doi.org/10.1080/10345329.2021.1949795.

Bleakley, P. (2021) Panic, pizza and mainstreaming the alt-right: a social media analysis of Pizzagate and the rise of the QAnon conspiracy, Current Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00113921211034896.

In the Media