Journal of Criminology

Using a South Australian example, and based on interviews with journalists and their sources, this paper examines how the media and their sources negotiate the reporting of fear in a community. It sketches the process by which a particular story was created, the features that were highlighted, and considers the part that different organisations play in shaping the construction of news about crime.

The inter-rater reliability of reintegrative shaming (Braithwaite 1989) concepts was tested at Community Accountability Conferences and at court using two observation methods. This paper presents data collected from 45 cases: 15 violence or property-related conferences; 15 drink-drive conferences; and a mix of 15 drink-drive, property-related, and violence-related court cases. The results, which are a synthesis of those presented in a more extensive report (Harris & Burton 1997), show that components of reintegrative shaming theory can be observed reliably using systematic observation and global rating observation methods.

In late nineteenth century Australia, Tasmania was the only colony with a decentralised policing system. Despite its uniqueness, few Australian scholars have analysed how this policing system operated in practice or fully explained why centralisation was introduced in 1899. After briefly examining the reasons why decentralisation was introduced in 1858, this paper considers the numerous criticisms of the system. These included the failure of municipal police forces to impartially and uniformly enforce the laws passed by parliament, the lack of co-operation between forces, and, with each of the 21 forces being headed by a superintendent, the excessive cost of separate forces: A select committee of 1886 confirmed weaknesses in the system and thereafter successive ministries, seeking more efficient and rational government, campaigned for police centralisation. Municipal opposition was only overcome when the Braddon government bribed the municipalities with substantial financial relief and persuaded them that municipal government would be strengthened by relinquishing the burden of controlling the police.

The Women's Safety Survey, conducted in 1996, asked a sample of 500 New Zealand women (selected from a pool of almost 2000 women) about their experience of any form of violence (psychological, physical or sexual) used against them by their partners. This article reports some of the survey's main findings on the prevalence of men's physical and sexual violence against their current partners and contrasts these findings with selected examples of recent research elsewhere and in New Zealand. The results suggest that New Zealand women, particularly Maori women, experience a comparatively high rate of violence at the hands of their male partners. However, violence by partners is a complex area to research and different surveys have used different methodologies in their attempts to measure its prevalence. The article concludes, therefore, with a discussion of some of the methodological difficulties in carrying out this type of research and suggests that, in interpreting and comparing research findings, methodological differences cannot be discounted.

The first part of this article asks whether judicial sentencing can be regarded as founded on a well-informed policy. An analysis of the character of sentencing policy as it is to be found in sentencing judgments, the criminological basis of this policy and an assessment of the public's knowledge of and participation in the development of judicial sentencing policy demonstrates a negative answer is required. A case is then made for the judicial development of a more comprehensive and criminologically well-founded policy and for appropriate community involvement in this process. Finally, a scheme is proposed to facilitate these two outcomes: judicial sentencing policy could then be regarded as well informed.