Category: Criminal Law

This Thursday, 25 April, marks the ninth anniversary of the annual Frontier Wars March in Canberra. This parade is a commemoration of First Nations resistance to the British invasion of the continent that began in 1788 and continued on in some areas until as late as 1934. These conflicts were written out of local history ...

New research undertaken by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research has added weight to the argument that increasing the number of police officers does not lead to a reduction in crime. The study BOCSAR looked into the impact of additional police on rates of crime and arrests, by exploiting a large increase in ...

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is reported to have asked Facebook to remove four items of unauthorised election content from the social media platform in the lead up to the 18 May federal election. The AEC, in partnership with ASIO and the Australian Signals Directorate, is said to be ramping up efforts to prevent the ...

It is alleged that a Thai sex worker was spat on and repeatedly struck by her Sydney clients, then directed to “just put up with it” by the woman she lived with. The complainant was allegedly told she had to engage in a gruelling schedule of sex work in order to pay off a supposed ...

In case you’ve missed any of them, here’s a rundown of the past week’s articles: Suspected Misconduct by Juror Triggers Investigation The Court of Appeal ordered an investigation into allegations that a juror in a sexual assault trial published a Facebook post calling for ‘sex predators’ to be ‘put down like dogs’. Click here to ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim The victim of one of Australia’s most high-profile miscarriages of justice has been killed in a hit and run incident in Los Angeles. Andrew Mallard was wrongly convicted of the murder of Perth jeweller Pamela Lawrence in 1995, and spent almost 12 years in prison as a result. The ...

Right now, Julian Assange is languishing in south London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison. He’s facing up to 12 months inside for breach of bail. And he’ll appear in Westminster Magistrates Court via video link on 2 May for a hearing related to his possible extradition to the US. It’s common knowledge that US authorities are ...

The debate around legalising recreational cannabis in this country is growing louder. What once seemed to Middle Australia like a far-out idea held by some rural hippies, nowadays, isn’t such a distant concept as the news of successful legalisation in 10 US states funnels in over the internet. Currently, there’s a piece of legislation under ...

The US government arrested an Australian citizen in a foreign country last week for a crime he allegedly committed on foreign soil. And the response by prime minister Scott Morrison and his cronies was to slap each other on the back and collectively express the view, “Look at the boss go.” As the Ecuadorian embassy ...

The NSW police drug detection dog program has been widely criticised, as it gets it wrong between two-thirds to three-quarters of the time. And the 2006 Ombudsman report pointed out that when searches are successful, most only turn up small amounts of cannabis. In 2013, a passenger disembarking at Sydney’s Redfern Station was six and ...