The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013-2017) has given national consciousness to the problematic treatment of sexual offences in Australia’s past. Yet there has been little historical research into the policing, prosecution and punishment of those crimes. This book examines Australia’s treatment of sexual crimes in the 1950s, a decade well known for its political and social conservatism, its prudish views on morality, and its prescriptive gender roles for men and women. Fewer would know that this same decade saw soaring arrests, mounting criminal prosecutions, and intensifying public debates about how to deal with sexual offenders. Or that sexual offences on children attracted the most concentrated state attention and public concern. Sex Crimes in the Fifties uncovers this new history by drawing on transcripts of hundreds of criminal proceedings and extensive research in criminal justice archives. We examine the criminal trial itself, exploring how prosecutors, defence counsel, witnesses, juries and judges understood sexual crimes. We consider the experience of women testifying in rape trials, the prosecution of sexual crimes against children, the court’s treatment of recent immigrants, the prosecution and punishment of homosexual men, the influence of psychiatric evidence, and the increasing public debates over the ‘sex offender’. We show that the 1950s was indeed foundational to many of our contemporary beliefs about sexual crimes. This book makes a major contribution to our historical and socio-legal knowledge about sexual offences and criminal prosecution. It will be of interest to historians, criminologists, sociologists, and legal scholars as well as general readers interested in the treatment of these crimes in our past.

Following the brutal 1954 murders of two children in Sioux City, Iowa, police attempted to quell public hysteria by arresting 20 men whom the authorities never claimed had anything to do with the crimes. Labelled as sexual psychopaths these gay men were sentenced to a mental institution until 'cured'. Shedding a harsh light on 1950s attitudes toward homosexuality, this carefully researched account of this horrendous event shows how the paranoia of the McCarthy era destroyed the lives of gay men and exposes a dark chapter in the history of post-war America.

This book explores sexual violence and crime in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, a period of intense social and legal change. Driven by the sexual revolutions, second wave feminism, and ideas of the rights of the child, there was a new public interest in the sexual assault of women and children. Sexual abuse was studied, surveyed and discussed more than ever before in Australian society. Yet, despite this, there remained substantial inaction, by government, from community and on the part of individuals. This book examines several difficult questions of our recent history: why did Australia not act more firmly to eradicate rape and child sexual abuse? What prevented our culture from looking seriously at trauma? How did we fail to protect victim-survivors? Rich in social and legal history, this study takes readers into the world of victims of sexual crime, and into the wider community that had to deal with sexual violence. At the core of this book is the question that resonates deeply right now: why does sexual violence appear seemingly insurmountable, despite significant change?

Whether in the form of warfare, dispossession, forced migration, or social prejudice, Australia’s sense of nationhood was born from—and continues to be defined by—experiences of violence. Legacies of Violence probes this brutal legacy through case studies that range from the colonial frontier to modern domestic spaces, exploring themes of empathy, isolation, and Australians’ imagined place in the world. Moving beyond the primacy that is typically accorded white accounts of violence, contributors place particular emphasis on the experiences of those perceived to be on the social periphery, repositioning them at the center of Australia’s relationship to global events and debates.

This study builds on a close examination of an archive of files that advised the Australian Commonwealth Executive on Papua New Guineans found guilty of capital offences in PNG between 1954 and 1965. These files provide telling insight into conceptions held by officials at different stages of the justice process into justice, savagery and civilisation, and colonialism and Australia’s role in the world. The particular combination of idealism and self-interest, liberalism and paternalism, and justice and authoritarianism axiomatic to Australian colonialism becomes apparent and enables discussion of Australia’s administration of PNG in the lead-up to the acceptance of independence as an immediate policy goal. The files show Australia gathering the authority to grant mercy into the hands of the Commonwealth and then devolving it back to the territories. In these transitions, the capital case review files show the trajectory of Australian colonialism during a period when the administration was unsure of the duration and nature of its future relationship with PNG.

An authoritative and in-depth treatment of the latest research into the criminal careers of sex offenders, providing background and investigating the policies used to combat one of society’s most intractable public issues. Features chapters based on original research from the most prominent scholars in the field of sex offender and criminal career research Deals with the entire criminal careers of sex offenders from youth to adulthood Illustrates the significance of the criminal career approach for theory, treatment, research, and policy regarding sex offenders Covers a wider breadth of topics than existing texts and uses data from various studies and countries, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and the Netherlands Features an introductory chapter charting the origins of the criminal career perspective as well as the history of sex offender research, pinpointing the most important research questions and current debates in both fields

Criminal responsibility is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, Self, Others and the State reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. It reconsiders the role of criminal responsibility in criminal law, arguing that criminal responsibility is significant because it organises key sets of relations - between self, others and the state - as relations of responsibility. Detailed studies of decisive moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of relations of responsibility, expose the complexity and dynamism of criminal responsibility and reveal that it is the means by which matters of subjectivity, relationality and power make themselves felt in the criminal law.