Week 11: Discrimination in the Criminal Legal System Practice Flashcards

These flashcards cover key terminology, statistics, and case studies regarding discrimination, corporate crime, and systemic inequalities in the criminal legal system based on Week 11 lecture notes.

Criminal Legal System (CLS)

A term used as an alternative to 'Criminal Justice System' (CJS) to acknowledge that the system often fails to deliver justice in practice.

Social Contract

The set of rules societies agree to live by, governing how individuals relate to one another and to the state.

Rule of Law

The legal expression of the social contract stating that no one is above the law, and all should be subject to it without fear or favour.

Conflict Theory

A framework used to study the differential possession of power and how unequal relationships to power shape crime and justice outcomes.

Three R's (Crime Construction)

The three steps required for a crime to exist in the system: Recognised, Reported, and Recorded.

Judicial Ghetto

A term used by Luke Vcon to describe how prisons function to warehouse stigmatised and marginalised populations.

Australian Imprisonment Rate Trend

Evidence showing an increase from approximately $148$–$149$ per $100,000$ in $2014$ to approximately $208$ per $100,000$ in recent figures.

Post-Release Mortality Period

The first $\text{~14 weeks}$ after release from prison, which is characterized by an elevated risk of self-harm and death.

White Collar Crime (Edwin Sutherland Definition)

Crime committed by a person of respectability and higher social status in the course of their occupation.

Creative Compliance

The practice of adhering to the letter of the law while violating its spirit by exploiting legal loopholes.

Wage Theft

A type of corporate offence against employees involving the failure to pay proper wages or superannuation.

Insider Trading

An illegal act in Australia involving the use of price-sensitive information to gain an advantage in financial products like shares.

Tesco Principle

A legal concept that limits corporate liability to the actions of senior executives, making it difficult to prove culpability in networks of decisions.

Deepwater Horizon (2010)

A BP oil rig explosion resulting in $11$ worker deaths and the spill of $134$ million gallons of oil.

Purdue Pharma / OxyContin Case

A case involving the Sackler family who marketed a drug as non-addictive, linked to approximately $500,000$ deaths in the US opioid epidemic.

First Nations Incarceration Rate

Approximately $2,500$ per $100,000$ of the adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, compared to $208$ per $100,000$ for non-Indigenous people.

Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991)

An investigation into $99$ deaths that made over $300$ recommendations, the majority of which have not been enacted.

AIC National Deaths in Custody Monitoring Programme

A programme established by a Royal Commission recommendation to publish annual reports and maintain a real-time dashboard on custody deaths.

Feminist Criminology

A field emerging in the $1970s$ that expanded research into female offending and how gender shapes justice outcomes.

Provocation Defence

A partial defence used historically by men to reduce murder charges to manslaughter, which was reformed in NSW to require 'extreme provocation'.

Double Victimisation

A risk faced by temporary visa holders or individuals in vulnerable employment due to their residency status and potential abuse.

MMIWG

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; a global issue in settler-colonial contexts involving disproportionate violence and femicide.

Black Witness

A work by Amy McGuire regarding the invisibility of Indigenous women's issues in media and political discourse.