Summary Offences: Studies

overview

studies

studies

This page higlights a selection of works regarding conceptualisation of summary offences, justice, social control and law enforcement.

It covers -

introductions
history
criminology
specific offences

The notes and profiles elsewhere on this site offer more detailed pointers to literature regarding blasphemy, flag burning, upskirt photography, regulation of street life and other questions.

     introductions

Points of entry to the literature about contemporary summary offences regimes in Australia include Principles of Criminal Law 2 ed (Pyrmont: Lawbook Co 2005) by Simon Bronitt & Bernadette McSherry, Australian Criminal Laws: Critical Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2004) by Bernadette McSherry & Bronwyn Naylor, Chris Corns' 1999 'Police Summary Prosecutions: The Past, Present and Future' (PDF), Kate Warner's Sentencing in Tasmania (Leichhardt: Federation Press 1991), Richard Fox and Arie Freiberg's Sentencing, State and Federal Law in Victoria 2 ed (Melbourne: Oxford Uni Press 1998).

     history

For historical background see Alan Hunt's Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999), Alex Castles' An Australian Legal History (Sydney: Law Book Co 1982), Bruce Kercher's An Unruly Child: A History of Law in Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1996), Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989) edited by Douglas Hay & Francis Snyder, Alan Macfarlane's The Justice and the Mare's Ale: Law and Disorder in seventeenth-century England (Oxford: Blackwell 1981), 'The Historical Antecedents of Contemporary Crime Control' by Lucia Zedner in 46 The British Journal of Criminology (2006) 78-96 and Edward Thompson's Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Acts (New York: Pantheon 1975).

     criminology

Perspectives by criminologists include No Space of Their Own. Young people and social control in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1990) by Rob White, 'Australia: Control, Containment or Empowerment?' by Chris Cuneen & Rob White in Comparative Youth Justice (London: Sage 2006) 96-115, 'Someone to Watch Over Us' by Richard Fox in 1(3) Criminology and Criminal Justice (2001) 251-276.

     specific offences

Some analysts have argued, often persuasively, that the real crime in much summary offence enforcement involves the crime of being homeless, poor, Aboriginal, of what is perceived as heterodox sexuality or merely young.

Australian perspectives include 'Waltzing Matilda One Hundred Years Later: Interactions Between Homeless Persons and the Criminal Justice System in Queensland' by Tamara Walsh in 25(1) Sydney Law Review (2003) 75-96 and her 'You're not welcome here: police move-on powers and discrimination law' with Monica Taylor in 30(1) UNSW Law Journal (2007) 151-173.

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