When the State harms: How Governments commit violence under the cover of legality
By Professor Susanne Karstedt, Griffith Criminology Institute
Footage has been released by media of an 18-year-old woman being violently thrown to the ground by a male corrections officer in a NSW detention centre in 2018.
Now 25, the woman has spoken publicly for the first time after a legal fight that forced the release of security footage. The vision is disturbing. The officer was found to have committed misconduct but received only a minor fine, six months of monitoring, and kept his job.
This case has sparked public outcry and renewed calls for an independent inquiry into the use of force by corrections staff in New South Wales.
But it also points to something deeper and more systemic: how state institutions, cloaked in the legitimacy of law and order, can perpetuate violence against the very citizens they’re meant to protect.
When violence comes from within the system
How do state actors and institutions —often cloaked in legality— engage in systematic violence against their own citizens, and the most vulnerable?
There is a complex interplay between state crime, structural violence, and injustice and state institutions can perpetuate harm, not only through overt acts of violence, but through policies that entrench inequality and marginalise vulnerable communities.
New research is a critical reminder that crime and justice must be examined not only on the streets, but also in the corridors of power.
State violence often hides in plain sight.
It doesn’t always look like a rogue officer slamming a teenage girl into the ground. Sometimes it looks like bureaucratic neglect, austerity policies, disproportionate policing or punitive immigration laws.
This form of violence, what scholars call structural violence, emerges when governments design or maintain systems that consistently harm or disadvantage specific communities.
These policies and practices may be legal, but they are not harmless.
This is a form of state crime: when the state, either through action or inaction, commits or facilitates harm against its own people, especially the most vulnerable.
A crisis of accountability
What makes these harms so insidious is their legality.
The systems that produce inequality and suffering are often written into law, enforced by institutions, and justified in the name of public good.
Yet the effects are undeniable. People in poverty lose access to healthcare and housing. Indigenous communities face disproportionate surveillance and incarceration. Migrants are detained in conditions that raise serious human rights concerns.
In these moments, the state does not fail to protect, it actively causes harm.
The NSW case is not an anomaly. It reflects a broader pattern – when institutions police themselves often, accountability is weak, investigations are opaque, sanctions are minor and offenders stay in positions of power.
This lack of accountability isn’t just about bad outcomes; it erodes the very legitimacy of the justice system. If citizens can be brutalised without consequence, what does justice mean?
Rethinking crime and justice – the way forward
My research urges a shift in how we think about crime.
It’s not enough to focus on individuals breaking the law, we must also examine how laws and institutions themselves produce harm through neglect, discrimination, or abuse of power.
This means asking uncomfortable questions: Who benefits from the current system? Who is silenced? And what happens when the law protects the powerful more than the people?
As calls grow louder for independent oversight of correctional institutions in NSW, we’re reminded that real justice requires more than inquiries or reviews. It demands structural change.
That starts with recognising the violence some governments and institutions inflict, not as exceptions or “bad apples,” but as symptoms of deeper inequalities written into the fabric of policy and power.