The High Court on crime in 2012 : outcomes and jurisprudence

This article examines the High Court decisions from 2012 which relate to criminal matters. This systematic analysis of all High Court judgments commenced in this Journal in 2010 and is now undertaken annually. The article explains the principles that derive from these cases and identifies jurisprudential themes from the decisions. It also sets out the significance of the cases and the possible wider consequences of the decisions.

Judicial valuation of the social costs of crime

The true economic functions of the criminal courts are, first, to deter potential prospective offenders from committing offences, and in so doing reduce the total social costs of crime in the future; and secondly, to force the convicted offender to bear some of the costs, which the crime has externalised onto the victim(s) and wider society through retributive justice. These objectives are achieved through the sentencing function. Critics have lamented that too many extraneous factors are taken into account when setting penalties but the authors argue in this article that nevertheless these sentences are optimal because of the judges' comparative advantage. What is of great interest, and the focus of this article, are the implicit valuations of the social costs of crime that these sentences imply. Using the South Australia higher criminal courts as a case study, the authors estimate and utilise these judicial valuations to suggest a methodology for measuring the true economic value of the criminal courts. The analysis helps put into perspective the courts' very valuable contribution to social welfare.

The role of verbal-textual hostility in hate crime regulation : final report

Verbal-textual hostility (VTH) plays a significant role in victims’ subjective perceptions of hatred and police officers’ assessment of a prejudice-related violence. Yet, to date, the role of VTH in ‘hate’ crime has been under-researched. The aim of this research has been to assess and evaluate the forensic possibilities contained in a closer reading of the words used in these crimes. Through a content analysis of incident characteristics and officers’ narratives of incidents, this report maps out how key speech-text indicators may assist to better evaluate the force and effects of prejudice-related violence. It is expected that this type of contextual analysis will lead to the development of more sophisticated risk assessment tools for use in frontline policing, and more targeted service enhancements for victims.

A governance of denial: hate crime in New Zealand and Australia

In Australia and New Zealand, the strategies employed by governments to remedy prejudice, intolerance and hatred occur on a continuum; ranging from global mission statements about multiculturalism/ biculturalism, through to the enactment of civil anti-discrimination and anti-vilification legislation. In some jurisdictions, these civil remedies have been extended to criminal codes and sentencing legislation, and enshrined in human rights charters. In the place of a comprehensive outline of each of the nine jurisdictions, case studies from throughout the region are presented as exemplars of the strategies employed and barriers faced in reducing prejudice-related violence.

The differences between the Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions belies a common theme that frames the delay in developing legislative responses to hate crime and the paucity of cases to reach the point at which they begin to establish an agreed set of norms and values about the abhorrence of prejudice and hatred. At most turns—whether political or public rhetoric, or legislative and policy development - there is a frontier denial, minimisation and negation of prejudice and hatred.

Crime toolkits : the productisation of cybercrime

The productisation of crime toolkits is happening at an ever-increasing rate. Previous attacks that required indepth knowledge of computer systems can now be purchased online. Large scale attacks previously requiring months to setup a botnet can now be scheduled for a small fee. Criminals are leveraging this opportunity of commercialization, by compromising web applications and user's browser, to gain advantages such as using the computer's resources for launching further attacks, or stealing data such as identifying information. Crime toolkits are being developed to attack an increasing number of applications and can now be deployed by attackers with little technical knowledge. This paper surveys the current trends in crime toolkits, with a case study on the Zeus botnet. We profile the types of exploits that malicious writers prefer, with a view to predicting future attack trends. We find that the scope for damage is increasing, particularly as specialisation and scale increase in cybercrime.

Crime toolkits : the current threats to web applications

Increasingly, web applications are being developed over the Internet. Securing these web applications is becoming important as they hold critical security features. However, cybercriminals are becoming smarter by developing a crime toolkit, and employing sophisticated techniques to evade detection. These crime toolkits can be used by any person to target Internet users. In this paper, we explore the techniques used in crime toolkits. We present a current state-of-the-art analysis of crime toolkits and focus on attacks against web applications. The crime toolkit techniques are compared with the vulnerability of web applications to help reveal particular behaviour such as popular web application vulnerabilities that malicious writers prefer. In addition, we outline the existing protection mechanism, and observe that the possibility for damage is rising, particularly as specialization and scale increase in cybercrime.

ID scanners and uberveillance in the night-time economy: crime prevention or invasion of privacy?

ID scanners are promoted as an effective solution to the problems of anti-social behavior and violence in many urban nighttime economies. However, the acceptance of this and other forms of computerized surveillance to prevent crime and anti-social behavior is based on several unproven assumptions. After outlining what ID scanners are and how they are becoming a normalized precondition of entry into one Australian nighttime economy, this chapter demonstrates how technology is commonly viewed as the key to preventing crime despite recognition of various problems associated with its adoption. The implications of technological determinism amongst policy makers, police, and crime prevention theories are then critically assessed in light of several issues that key informants talking about the value of ID scanners fail to mention when applauding their success. Notably, the broad, ill-defined, and confused notion of “privacy” is analyzed as a questionable legal remedy for the growing problems of überveillance.

The demise of Bicycle George : a life of crime

This short piece looks at the life of a murderer, George Blunderfield (alias Arthur Oldring), who was hanged in Melbourne in 1918. Melburnians, or visitors to the city, may have seen his image on the wall at the Old Melbourne Gaol. Blunderfield's life started out normally
enough, and then descended into horrific crime. His story includes bicycle racing, escape from an island prison, and then recruitment for service with the Australian Imperial Forces in wartime Victoria. In the last years of his life, Blunderfield wreaked havoc from the western to the eastern coasts of Australia. This in turn had a dramatic effect on his immediate family, which is also detailed here. This story draws on the archives at PROV as well as on State Records Office of Western Australia material, with help from Ms Jean
Bellamy, a distant relative of George Blunderfield.