DrMolly McCarthy

Dr Molly McCarthy is a Senior Research Fellow (Criminology) at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. In addition to her academic experience, she previously worked in child and youth mental health, public health research and as a Director at Deloitte Access Economics providing consulting services to state and federal government agencies in the areas of mental health and criminal justice. She leads research in two primary streams - exploring pathways into and out of youth offending, and examining the impact of policing approaches and tactics, and diversionary initiatives. Dr McCarthy was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) (2024-2027) for a project which aims to identify contemporary social and environmental risks for youth offending, to better understand drivers of recent growth in high frequency and high harm youth offending, and to inform new approaches to youth crime prevention and desistance. She has been awarded over $1.3 million in competitive funding and has partnered with a range of criminal agencies across Australia on projects to support the development of evidence-based criminal justice policy and practice.