Drink Spiking and Rock Throwing

Ashworth Andrew , ‘Is the Criminal Law a Lost Cause?’ (2000) 116, Law Quarterly Review 225, 225.

See Crimes Amendment (Drink and Food Spiking) Act 2008 (NSW), Crimes (Criminal Organisations Control) Act 2009 (NSW), Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Public Safety) Act 2005 (NSW), and Crimes Amendment (Rock Throwing) Act 2008 (NSW), respectively and Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) in general.

See, eg, the offence of drink and food spiking has been introduced in Victoria: see Crimes Legislation Amendment (Food and Drink Spiking) Act 2008 (Vic).

See, eg, Garland David , The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (2001) and Lacey Nicola , The Prisoners' Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies (2008).

Garland , above n 4, 111–112.

Ibid 112.

Weatherburn Don , Law and Order in Australia: Rhetoric and Reality (2004) 29.

See s 38A Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). Conviction for this offence is punishable by imprisonment for up to 2 years or a significant fine.

See s 41H Summary Offences Act 1966 (Vic) and s 53(2) Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) (which now provides that it is an offence to administer a drug with the intention of rendering that person incapable of resistance and thereby enabling a person to commit an indecent act with that person).

Victoria , Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 4 December 2008, Col 4947 (Ms Joanne Duncan).

Pre-eminent examples of such systematising projects include the Thefts Acts 1968 and 1978 (UK) and perhaps now in NSW, the Crimes Amendment (Fraud, Identity and Forgery) Bill 2009 (NSW) which aims to modernise and simplify the existing fraud and forgery provisions in the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) with a view to deleting the obsolete and redundant provisions and replacing them with provisions based broadly on the Model Criminal Code.

See Part 6A Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 (NSW).

See s 59A Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) and s 8D Bail Act 1978 (NSW). This conduct was already covered by existing offences of riot and affray.

This legislation was based on the South Australian Serious and Organised Crime (Control) Act 2008 (SA). Since the passage of the NSW Act, there have been moves to introduce similar legislation in other jurisdictions: See, eg, Crimes Legislation Amendment (Serious and Organised Crime) Bill 2009 (Cth).

A breach of a control order is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for up to 2 years or 5 years for a second offence: s 26(1).

For further discussion of this Act, see Loughnan Arlie , ‘The Legislation We Had to Have? The Crimes (Criminal Organisations Control) Act 2009 (NSW)’ (2009) 40(3) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 457.

For a discussion of Commonwealth anti-terrorism legislation, see Head Michael , ‘Counter-Terrorism Laws: A Threat to Political Freedom, Civil Liberties and Constitutional Rights’ (2002) 26 Melbourne University Law Review 666.

See Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) s 101.4(1).

See Graffiti Control Amendment Bill 2009 (NSW). This Bill was passed on 25 November and is currently awaiting assent. It doubles the maximum penalty that may be imposed for defacing or damaging property from 6 to 12 months imprisonment.

For discussion, see McSherry Bernadette , ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Inchoate Crimes: The Growing Reliance on Preparatory Offences’ in McSherry Bernadette Norrie Alan Bronitt Simon (eds), Regulating Deviance: The Redirection of Criminalisation and the Futures of Criminal Law (2009) 35.

Recently, the criminal association laws have recently been criticised by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime on this basis among others: see <abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/03/2676126.htm> at 29 January 2010.

For discussion, see Zedner Lucia , ‘Pre-crime and post-criminology?’ (2007) 11(2) Theoretical Criminology 261, 262 and Tadros Victor , ‘Crimes and Security’ (2008) 71(6) Modern Law Review 940.

Horder Jeremy , ‘Rethinking Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person’ (1994) 14(3) Oxford journal of Legal Studies 335, 338.

A similar offence was introduced to South Australia in September 2006 and at the time of writing, the WA Labor Party has called on the Coalition government of that state to create a similar offence: see <wa.alp.org.au/news/0609/25-02.php>.

NSW, Legislative Council, 7 May 2008 (The Hon John Hatzistergos, Attorney General and Minister for Justice).

Ibid.

Another example of the creation of new offences at the expense of coherency may be found in NSW sexual offences law. Following the high-profile gang rapes of the early 2000s, the NSW parliament enacted an new offence — aggravated sexual assault in company — despite the fact that this type of conduct was already covered by an existing offence (aggravated sexual assault): see s 61JA Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) and s 61J Crimes Act 1900 (NSW).

Duff Antony R , Punishment, Communication and Community (2000) 58. See also Duff Antony R , ‘Penal Communities’ (1999) Punishment & Society 27.

Ibid at 67.

Ashworth Andrew , Principles of Criminal Law (5th ed, 2006) 88. See also Chalmers James Leverick Fiona , ‘Fair Labelling in Criminal Law’ (2008) 71(2) Modern Law Review 217.

Horder Jeremy , above n 23, 338–339 (emphasis in original).

Model Criminal Code Officers' Committee, Discussion Paper: Drink Spiking (April 2006) 11 (emphasis in original).