Rate My Professor Emily Hurren Paterson

Dr Emily Hurren Paterson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University. Her research focuses on child maltreatment, youth offending, domestic and family violence, poly-victimisation, mental health trajectories, and their intersections with criminal justice and child protection systems. Utilizing large-scale administrative datasets, she investigates longitudinal patterns, intergenerational continuity in child protection contact, developmental trajectories of mental health service use, and dual-system involvement in domestic violence and child maltreatment. Paterson is affiliated with the Griffith Criminology Institute and holds a PhD. Her scholarship has garnered over 710 citations on Google Scholar, with an h-index of 12 and i10-index of 13.

Key publications include 'Police cautioning in Queensland: the impact on juvenile offending pathways' (2006, with Dennison and Stewart), 'Sex offenders' perceptions of the effectiveness and fairness of humanity, dominance, and displaying an understanding of cognitive distortions in offender treatment' (2008), 'The Use of Administrative Data for Longitudinal Replication: Evaluating a 10-Year Queensland Cohort of Prosecuting Youth' (2017, cited 39 times), 'Who maltreats? Distinct pathways of intergenerational (dis)continuity in child protection contact' (2021, with McKenzie et al., cited 32 times), 'New directions in intergenerational child maltreatment research' (2024), and 'Criminal justice system involvement across adolescence and early adulthood' (2025). She has contributed to funded projects such as the Criminology Research Grant for 'Poly-victimisation and mental health across adolescence and early adulthood' (2024, Australian Institute of Criminology) and the Evaluation of the Child Protection Joint Response Team Trial (2019). In teaching, Paterson convenes courses including Fraud and Cybercrime (3026CCJ), Understanding Domestic and Family Violence (3034CCJ), and Crime Prevention, and coordinates the Bachelor of Psychological Science/Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice program. She was highly commended in the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Award (2024) for Crime Prevention and part of teams awarded for research excellence (2015).