Sex Crimes in the Fifties


Book Description

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013-2017) has given national consciousness to the problematic treatment of sexual offences in Australia’s past. Yet there has been little historical research into the policing, prosecution and punishment of those crimes. This book examines Australia’s treatment of sexual crimes in the 1950s, a decade well known for its political and social conservatism, its prudish views on morality, and its prescriptive gender roles for men and women. Fewer would know that this same decade saw soaring arrests, mounting criminal prosecutions, and intensifying public debates about how to deal with sexual offenders. Or that sexual offences on children attracted the most concentrated state attention and public concern. Sex Crimes in the Fifties uncovers this new history by drawing on transcripts of hundreds of criminal proceedings and extensive research in criminal justice archives. We examine the criminal trial itself, exploring how prosecutors, defence counsel, witnesses, juries and judges understood sexual crimes. We consider the experience of women testifying in rape trials, the prosecution of sexual crimes against children, the court’s treatment of recent immigrants, the prosecution and punishment of homosexual men, the influence of psychiatric evidence, and the increasing public debates over the ‘sex offender’. We show that the 1950s was indeed foundational to many of our contemporary beliefs about sexual crimes. This book makes a major contribution to our historical and socio-legal knowledge about sexual offences and criminal prosecution. It will be of interest to historians, criminologists, sociologists, and legal scholars as well as general readers interested in the treatment of these crimes in our past.




Sex Crimes in the Fifties


Book Description

This book examines Australia's treatment of sexual crimes in the 1950s, a decade well known for its political and social conservatism, its prudish views on morality, and its prescriptive gender roles for men and women. Fewer would know that this same decade saw soaring arrests, mounting criminal prosecutions, and intensifying public debates about how to deal with sexual offenders. Or that sexual offences on children attracted the most concentrated state attention and public concern.Sex Crimes in the Fifties uncovers this new history by drawing on transcripts of hundreds of criminal proceedings and extensive research in criminal justice archives. "




Sexual Violence in Australia, 1970s–1980s


Book Description

This book explores sexual violence and crime in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, a period of intense social and legal change. Driven by the sexual revolutions, second wave feminism, and ideas of the rights of the child, there was a new public interest in the sexual assault of women and children. Sexual abuse was studied, surveyed and discussed more than ever before in Australian society. Yet, despite this, there remained substantial inaction, by government, from community and on the part of individuals. This book examines several difficult questions of our recent history: why did Australia not act more firmly to eradicate rape and child sexual abuse? What prevented our culture from looking seriously at trauma? How did we fail to protect victim-survivors? Rich in social and legal history, this study takes readers into the world of victims of sexual crime, and into the wider community that had to deal with sexual violence. At the core of this book is the question that resonates deeply right now: why does sexual violence appear seemingly insurmountable, despite significant change?




Legacies of Violence


Book Description

Whether in the form of warfare, dispossession, forced migration, or social prejudice, Australia’s sense of nationhood was born from—and continues to be defined by—experiences of violence. Legacies of Violence probes this brutal legacy through case studies that range from the colonial frontier to modern domestic spaces, exploring themes of empathy, isolation, and Australians’ imagined place in the world. Moving beyond the primacy that is typically accorded white accounts of violence, contributors place particular emphasis on the experiences of those perceived to be on the social periphery, repositioning them at the center of Australia’s relationship to global events and debates.




Capital Punishment, Clemency and Colonialism in Papua New Guinea, 1954–65


Book Description

This study builds on a close examination of an archive of files that advised the Australian Commonwealth Executive on Papua New Guineans found guilty of capital offences in PNG between 1954 and 1965. These files provide telling insight into conceptions held by officials at different stages of the justice process into justice, savagery and civilisation, and colonialism and Australia’s role in the world. The particular combination of idealism and self-interest, liberalism and paternalism, and justice and authoritarianism axiomatic to Australian colonialism becomes apparent and enables discussion of Australia’s administration of PNG in the lead-up to the acceptance of independence as an immediate policy goal. The files show Australia gathering the authority to grant mercy into the hands of the Commonwealth and then devolving it back to the territories. In these transitions, the capital case review files show the trajectory of Australian colonialism during a period when the administration was unsure of the duration and nature of its future relationship with PNG.




Sex Offenders


Book Description

An authoritative and in-depth treatment of the latest research into the criminal careers of sex offenders, providing background and investigating the policies used to combat one of society’s most intractable public issues. Features chapters based on original research from the most prominent scholars in the field of sex offender and criminal career research Deals with the entire criminal careers of sex offenders from youth to adulthood Illustrates the significance of the criminal career approach for theory, treatment, research, and policy regarding sex offenders Covers a wider breadth of topics than existing texts and uses data from various studies and countries, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and the Netherlands Features an introductory chapter charting the origins of the criminal career perspective as well as the history of sex offender research, pinpointing the most important research questions and current debates in both fields




Self, Others and the State


Book Description

Criminal responsibility is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, Self, Others and the State reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. It reconsiders the role of criminal responsibility in criminal law, arguing that criminal responsibility is significant because it organises key sets of relations - between self, others and the state - as relations of responsibility. Detailed studies of decisive moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of relations of responsibility, expose the complexity and dynamism of criminal responsibility and reveal that it is the means by which matters of subjectivity, relationality and power make themselves felt in the criminal law.




The Corrigible and the Incorrigible


Book Description

Explores how the social sciences and clinical medicine contributed to the understanding and treatment of offenders in three disparate political regimes




Child Sexual Abuse Reported by Adult Survivors


Book Description

Child Sexual Abuse Reported by Adult Survivors is a wide-ranging and timely critical history and analysis of legal responses to ‘historical’ or ‘non-recent’ child sexual abuse (NRCSA) in England and Wales, Ireland and Australia, each of which represents an evolving and progressive approach to this important and complex issue. The book examines the emergence of NRCSA as a distinctive social, political and legal phenomenon in each country and explores the legal responses developed to address its unprecedented challenges. Courts and parliaments in each country have reformed existing doctrine and practice and have created new ways of holding state and private actors accountable and new ways of addressing survivors’ injuries. Criminal law, tort law, public inquiries and state reparations have all been to the forefront of these new legal responses, which have transformed law’s engagement with NRCSA survivors and understandings of justice itself. However, despite this undeniable progress, the book identifies ways in which the legal responses developed in each country fail to deliver accountability and recognition to NRCSA survivors and argues that such failures betray the law’s inherent ambivalence to delivering justice for these survivors. Creating new insights into legal responses to this complex contemporary legal, social and political problem, this book will be of great interest to academic lawyers, political scientists and historians, as well as those working on related topics in criminology, sociology, social policy, cultural studies and gender studies.




Sexual Offending


Book Description

There is growing recognition that sexual offending is a multi-determined phenomenon requiring a multi-disciplinary perspective. The significant contribution of psychology and psychiatry, but also sociology, gender studies and anthropology to the study of sex offending and perpetrators of sex offenses has played a key role in the development of a distinct field of research. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in criminological research on the topic, introducing criminological theory and concepts, scientific evidence and observations, and new methodologies to the field. This book brings together international leading scholars to consider key topics on sex offending and, where possible, compare and contrast criminological viewpoints with those of other disciplines, such as psychology and psychiatry. This book considers the following questions: Are the key explanatory factors of sex offenses completely distinct and different from those of non-sex crime and delinquency? Are current models explaining adult sex offending also applicable to explain sex crimes on college campuses, female sex offending, sexual exploitation, sexual homicide, or child luring over the internet? Are today’s youth involved in sex offenses tomorrow’s adult perpetrators of sex crimes? What is the risk of sexual recidivism and are risk assessment tools effective to identify individuals at-risk of committing another sex crime in the future? Are current legal measures used to prevent sex crimes effective? What are the known effects of such measures? What are the issues and challenges related to the criminal investigation of sex offenses? This book is essential reading for students and researchers from disciplines such as criminology, psychiatry, psychology, sexology, social work and sociology, as well as criminal justice professionals and practitioners such as police investigators, prosecutors, judges, probation/parole officers, and treatment providers/counsellors involved with individuals having perpetrated sex offenses.