Course

Crime & the Criminal Process - LAWS1021

Faculty: Faculty of Law

School: Faculty of Law

Course Outline: See below

Campus: Sydney

Career: Undergraduate

Units of Credit: 6

EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)

Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 4

Enrolment Requirements:

This course is strictly for students undertaking Law programs only.

Excluded: JURD7101, JURD7121, LAWS1001

CSS Contribution Charge: 3 (more info)

Tuition Fee: See Tuition Fee Schedule

Further Information: See Class Timetable

View course information for previous years.

Description

This course introduces students to fundamental aspects of criminal justice and process. Woven through the course is a critical examination of the interaction between the criminal justice system and the criminal law: specifically, that application of the law is shaped by and dependent on decisions made by criminal justice actors including police, prosecutors and judicial officers. Specific areas of focus include: why some activities are criminalised and others not; the use and misuse of discretion; the impact of the reliance on summary justice; the significance of pre-trial processes such as search, arrest and bail; and the over-representation of Indigenous people and other vulnerable groups. Crime and the Criminal Process also introduces the doctrinal building blocks of criminal law, and applies these principles to a number of key statutory offences such as public order offences and drugs offences which illustrate the process themes above. The impact of public policy and law reform is an important underlying theme.

Main Topics
  • Criminalisation, over-criminalisation and defining crime
  • Criminal process, including police powers and pre-trial process
  • Components of criminal offences: physical and mental elements
  • Drugs (NSW only), including harm minimisation policies and incursions into general principles of criminal law
  • Public order offenses
More information can be found on the Course Outline Website.
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