CRIM2020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Nils Christie
Week 1: Criminalisation
• What determines what is criminal behaviour?
• How criminal law in constructed through race, class and gender
• Social reactions shape 'law and order'
• Harm, morality and offensiveness used as a basis for criminalisation
• Preventative justice as basis
'Crime does not exist. It is created. First there are acts. Then follows a long process of giving
meaning to those acts' (Nils Christie, Criminologist)
Definitions of Crime
• Difference between law and morality?
• Legal definition of crime?
• Why is certain conduct treated as criminal by the law?
• Where do criminal laws come from? (common and statute law; judge made and
parliament made law)
o Commonwealth is very limited when it comes to their power whereas the state has
unlimited power
o Law of Provocation (reduces a crime from murder to manslaughter and not a
complete defence): The provocation has to have actually caused the loss of self-
control and act as the defendant did, and it is not merely an act of vengeance.
• How are crimes measures and reported?
o Crime stats (ABS)
o AIC
o Police records (only reported crimes)
o Victim surveys
o BOCSAR (underreported crimes : sexual assault)
You cannot consent to be killed
Questions to Consider
1. Behaviours which are criminal in a relative way (definitions have changed over
time)
• Slavery
• Spousal immunity (husbands could not be guilty of raping their wives)
• Drugs
• Workplace deaths
• Regulatory offence (not wearing a seatbelt) different to crimes
2. Cultural Relativity: the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be
understood based on that person's own culture
3. Who are the definers of crime
• Police
• Judges and politicians
• People of authority
• The media
4. What is the 'hierarchy of credibility'?
• Influence public in opinions
• those at the top (of an organization or a society) are seen to be more credible than those
at the bottom.
5. Possible unintended consequences of too many new crimes?
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