Suchergebnisse

A comparative socio-legal examination of three recent controversies in four countries, this book provides a foundation for finding answers to many of the questions surrounding the universality of human rights values.

This special issue had its origins in a workshop on criminal law and criminalisation which we co-convened, and our law schools co-hosted, in 2017. That workshop was the fourth in what has become an annual event in Australia (starting with a Sydney Law School-hosted event in 2014 (see Crofts and Loughnan 2015)). These workshops came into being because of a recognised gap in the Australian scholarly environment: a place for criminalisation scholars to share, discuss and receive feedback on their work (see also Anthony and Croft 2017; Henderson 2016).
To access the full text of the guest editor's introducton to this special issue on 'Hidden Criminalisation—Punitiveness at the Edges', download the accompanying PDF file.

Legislation in all Australian states and territories creates offences and provides for police roadside testing in relation to 'drug driving'. Ostensibly motivated by the same road safety objectives and impairment paradigm as drink driving laws, drug driving laws adopt a significantly different approach. Whereas random breath testing tests for all forms of alcohol and is designed to determine whether there is a sufficient concentration of alcohol in the driver's body that s/he should be deemed to be impaired, random drug testing typically tests for the presence of any quantity of only the three most widely used illicit drugs—cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy—in the driver's oral fluids, without reference to what is known about the different pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic qualities of different drugs. This article examines this idiosyncratic approach to the criminalisation of drug driving, highlighting its weak correlation with the important road safety objective of deterring substance-impaired driving, and the risks of both over- and under-criminalisation that it creates. It argues that public policy on the prohibition of certain drugs and the criminalisation of their use should be disentangled from public policy on impaired driving. It recommends that drug driving laws in all Australian jurisdictions should be brought back into line with drink driving laws, via legislation and testing practices that turn on substance-specific prescribed concentrations for all drugs (illicit and licit) that have the potential to impair drivers.

Legislation in all Australian states and territories creates offences and provides for police roadside testing in relation to 'drug driving'. Ostensibly motivated by the same road safety objectives and impairment paradigm as drink driving laws, drug driving laws adopt a significantly different approach. Whereas random breath testing tests for all forms of alcohol and is designed to determine whether there is a sufficient concentration of alcohol in the driver's body that s/he should be deemed to be impaired, random drug testing typically tests for the presence of any quantity of only the three most widely used illicit drugs—cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy—in the driver's oral fluids, without reference to what is known about the different pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic qualities of different drugs. This article examines this idiosyncratic approach to the criminalisation of drug driving, highlighting its weak correlation with the important road safety objective of deterring substance-impaired driving, and the risks of both over- and under-criminalisation that it creates. It argues that public policy on the prohibition of certain drugs and the criminalisation of their use should be disentangled from public policy on impaired driving. It recommends that drug driving laws in all Australian jurisdictions should be brought back into line with drink driving laws, via legislation and testing practices that turn on substance-specific prescribed concentrations for all drugs (illicit and licit) that have the potential to impair drivers.

Some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, organizations, and communities in Australia have embraced international human rights norms in their efforts to obtain redress for historical grievances and influence government policy and legal reform on contemporary social justice issues. This is unsurprising given the absence of formal national infrastructure for human rights recognition in Australia. While the use of international law and frameworks has brought notable gains, there have also been significant limitations on the relevance of international human rights law to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. These limitations are both a result of the local legal conditions in Australia as well as the form and nature of international law generally. A case study of the attempts during the 1990s and 2000s to apply the label of genocide to past government policies of removing and separating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities illustrates that there are considerable challenges and risks associated with campaign strategies based on the local mobilization of international human rights law.