The Australian Criminal Justice System

Crime and criminal justice; discrimination against minorities; police; sentencing; etc.; articles by M.W. Daunton-Fear and A. Freiberg and F.G. Cohen, D. Chappell and P.R. Wilson separately annotated.

Crime and Justice: a Guide to Criminology has been for many years a leading Australian textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate students approaching this subject for the first time. The contributors are well known research active academics in Australia who contribute to the criminological debate at national and international level. Fully revised and updated, this 5th edition offers a comprehensive guide in criminal justice and criminology that is well suited to a dual-semester approach. It covers a wide range of topics including: different forms of crimes .. from street crime to state crime and international crimes; who commits crimes and who are the victims of crimes; and how society responds to crime. This book offers a balance between critical and administrative criminological traditions to add to the discourse of crime and justice in the twenty-first century.

Provides a complete overview of the criminal justice process. It analyses the influences that shape criminal justice and examines the institutional and administrative features of its operation in all jurisdictions. Findlay, University of Sydney, Australia.

How much crime is committed in Australia? What sort of crime, where and by whom? What can we do to stop it? This book deals in facts and dispels myths. Don Weatherburn, Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, shows how policies are driven by the political need to manage public reactions, not to control and prevent crime. Law and Order in Australia informs public debate about crime in Australia by contrasting popular assumptions about crime and crime control with what is actually known to be true. The opening chapter sets the scene by asking how serious Australia's crime problems are. Weatherburn then offers a critique of the way Australian governments attempt to deal with Australia's crime problems. This is followed by the foundations for a discussion of what actually works in crime prevention and control by highlighting some basic facts about crime and offenders. The final chapters discuss what the evidence reveals about crime prevention and control and the key issues in crime prevention and control in Australia. Weatherburn clearly provides numerous ideas for better policies, ones that will actually work.

Building on the strengths of earlier editions, Juvenile Justice: Youth and Crime in Australia continues to provide a clear and comprehensive introduction to juvenile justice. Helps australian students explore key issues. The text presents the main concepts and topics of juvenile justice in a way that is simple and descriptive, yet critical. New chapter highlights help students to recognise the key issues. Highlights of this edition: Increased discussion of media representations of youth and youth crime. Coverage of detention and community corrections, crime prevention and restorative justice, which reflects a positive shift towards considering the basic rights and wellbeing of young people. Book jacket.

If the goal of our justice system is to reduce crime and create a safer society, then we must do better. According to conventional wisdom, severely punishing offenders reduces the likelihood that they’ll offend again. Why, then, do so many who go to prison continue to commit crimes after their release? What do we actually know about offenders and the reasons they break the law? In Crime & Punishment, Russell Marks argues that the lives of most criminal offenders – and indeed of many victims of crime – are marked by often staggering disadvantage. For many offenders, prison only increases their chances of committing further crimes. And despite what some media outlets and politicians want us to believe, harsher sentences do not help most victims to heal. Drawing on his experience as a lawyer, Marks eloquently makes the case for restorative justice and community correction, whereby offenders are obliged to engage with victims and make amends. Crime & Punishment is a provocative call for change to a justice system in desperate need of renewal.

Modern Criminal Law of Australia is a guide to interpreting and understanding statutory offence provisions in every Australian jurisdiction. It covers the common law, traditional code and model code systems, and includes examples from all states. This unique book provides students with the skills to practise law anywhere in Australia.

For more than 40 years, Professor Peter Norden has worked in a variety of roles within the Australian criminal justice system. These include his years as Catholic Chaplain to the Victorian Prison system including Pentridge Prison (1985-1992) and as Convenor of the Victorian Criminal Justice Coalition (1992-2008). 'Seeking Justice' reflects on this rich and diverse journey, providing reflections on decades of front-line work and advocacy. As one of the six reviewers of the book, Melbourne Barrister, Julian McMahon AC QC, renowned death row defence Counsel for Australians awaiting execution in our Asian region notes: 'Peter Norden has drawn a remarkable portrait of an era: of jails, executions, police killings, prisoners lost in their cells, brutality, survival and hope'.'Seeking Justice' is an extensive volume of 450 pages, and covers such historic personalities as Bill O'Meally, the last man flogged by the State in Australia, and Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged by the State in Australia. Norden describes the crisis surrounding the infamous death of the Jika Jika Five in a protest fire within Pentridge in 1987, and details hitherto unreported from the Walsh Street murder trial following the execution killing of the two young Police Officers in Walsh Street, South Yarra in 1988. But Seeking Justice does much more: it points to an alternative model of restorative justice that could be implemented to secure a more secure and safer society in Australia in coming decades. Such a model would address the current international scandal of the mass incarceration of Indigenous Australians. It would set a new direction for the Australian criminal justice system founded on evidence, and not on a misguided model based on our past as a penal settlement. Peter Norden is well placed to call for our political leaders to explore new paths in pursuit of true justice and greater community safety in Australia today.