‘A Very Expensive Lesson’: Counting the Costs of Penalty Notices for Anti-social Behaviour

Methven, Elyse

doi:10.1080/10345329.2014.12036018

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Similarly, victimization surveys consistently show that a significant proportion of victims do not report their assault to the police (Kershaw, Nicholas, & Walker, 2008;Pedersen, Kyvsgaard, & Balvig, 2017). Police may also choose not to report the assaults they attendparticularly if low in severity-or administer fines, where jurisdictions allow, as an alternative to official reporting (Methven, 2014;Schwartz & Vega, 2017). The above examples are reflected in the finding that only one quarter to one third of violent incidents that appear in hospital Accident and Emergency datasets also appear in police records (Florence, Shepherd, Brennan, & Simon, 2011).…”

Section: Official Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing violence in the night-time economy: A review of established and emerging methodologies

Philpot

Liebst

Møller

et al. 2019

Aggression and Violent Behavior

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Night-time economy (NTE) leisure zones, while providing local economic growth and positive social experiences, are hotspots for urban public violence. Research aimed at better understanding and thus reducing this violence has employed a range of empirical methods: official records, self-reports, experiments, and observational techniques. In this paper, we review the applications of these methodologies for analyzing NTE violence on key research dimensions, including mapping incidents across time and space; interpreting the motivations and meaning of violence; identifying social psychological background variables and health consequences; and the ability to examine mid-violent interactions. Further, we assess each method in terms of reliability, validity, and the potential for establishing causal claims. We demonstrate that there are fewer and less established methodologies available for examining the interactional dynamics of NTE violence. Using real-life NTE bystander intervention as a case example, we argue that video-based behavioral analysis is a promising method to address this gap. Given the infancy and relative lack of exposure of the video observational method, we provide recommendations for scholars interested in adopting this technique.

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Section: Official Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing violence in the night-time economy: A review of established and emerging methodologies

Philpot

Liebst

Møller

et al. 2019

Aggression and Violent Behavior

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“…Against this popular idea of the fine and considering both its increasing ubiquity and the expanding sites in which it can be issued, critical interventions have aimed to show that fines are inefficient, unequally and prejudicially issued across different social groups, disproportionately harmful to already vulnerable people, and cause a “net-widening effect” by inaugurating contact with the criminal justice system. Fines, as these scholars have shown, can lead to criminalization, incarceration, and even death (Blue, 2017; Brown et al, 2017; Cooper, 2018; Methven, 2014; Porter, 2015; Schwartz, 2017; William and Gilbert, 2011). Critical scholarship examines how fines are used by police to target minoritized communities and to unevenly discipline access to public space.…”

Section: Finesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Methven traces the history of the fine in NSW over the last 30 or so years, showing how commissioned reports from the NSW Ombudsman and the NSW Law Reform Commission have consistently been ignored for their warnings and recommendations. Methven (2014) writes that it is not only that the insights generated by these reports have been ignored, but that it would take a radical sort of political courage within the government itself to engage with them directly “in a state where criminal laws are dictated more by hard-hitting law and order slogans than evidence-based research” (p. 255). She notes that when legislation introduces new offenses, confers higher penalties, and/or affords police more power, there is no evidence given to justify these various expansions of the fine’s reach, nor to show that such expansions will have the intended effect of deterring so-called offensive behavior.…”

Section: Finesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Extraordinary powers for extraordinary times”: A conjunctural analysis of pandemic policing, common sense, and the abolitionist horizon

Brooks,

Lorange

2023

Crime, Media, Culture

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In this paper, we offer a conjunctural analysis of policing and incarceration, examining their expansion in relation to structural economic conditions over the last 50 years and interrogating how the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic enabled extraordinary growth in policing powers in the Australian jurisdictions of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC). We examine how popular support for police-led responses to crisis and fines as a common-sense solution to social problems were sought during the period that the Public Health Orders were in effect in the two states. We argue that the discursive project of naturalizing the police-led response to the pandemic—via official communications from the state governments as well as media coverage of the pandemic—attempts to further entrench a vision of law and order governance in which infrastructures of discipline and punishment are necessary and inevitable. We identify this vision as a direct barrier to abolition and a significant limit on the capacity to imagine alternative frameworks for justice. We end by considering a small archive of tweets from users in NSW and VIC published on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (now called X) in 2020–21. We argue that this archive registers the way the common-sense status of the fine as an efficient, effective, and equitable punishment gives way to punitive fantasies about police and prisons. We read this archive alongside the broad refusal to pay Covid-related fines and the ongoing legal disputes contesting the legitimacy of their issuance, concluding by proposing that the conjunctural moment of the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to unresolved contradictions between the naturalized logic of law and order crisis management and the potential for this logic to come undone.

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“…The question of whether the crime of using offensive language in NSW is a strict liability offence, or whether it incorporates subjective mens rea (mental) elements remains unresolved (McNamara and Quilter 2013: 555-559 Despite being characterised as 'petty' offences, offensive language crimes can attract significant punishments ranging from a fine of AU$660 in NSW to up to six months' imprisonment in the Northern Territory and in Queensland (for example, Summary Offences Act 2005 (Qld) s 6). As an alternative to charging someone with offensive language, police officers in most Australian jurisdictions can issue on-the-spot fines (criminal infringement notices (CINs), also known as penalty notices) for offensive, obscene or indecent language (see, for example, Criminal Procedure Regulations (NSW) reg 106 and sch 3; Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) ss 333-337; Methven 2014Methven , 2017a.…”

Section: Offensive Language Crimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Little Respect: Swearing, Police and Criminal Justice Discourse

Methven

2018

Int J for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy

Self Cite

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This article interrogates a commonly articulated idea in relation to the criminalisation of offensive language: namely, that swearing at police challenges their authority and thereby deserves criminal punishment. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the article examines representations of swearing at police officers in offensive language cases and parliamentary debates, including constructions of power, authority and order. It contributes to—but also denaturalises—conceptions about police power and authority in the context of public order policing. The article argues that criminal justice discourse plays a significant and often under-acknowledged role in naturalising the punishment of swearing at, or in the presence of, police officers.

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‘A Very Expensive Lesson’: Counting the Costs of Penalty Notices for Anti-social Behaviour

Cited by 8 publications

References 5 publications

Capturing violence in the night-time economy: A review of established and emerging methodologies

Capturing violence in the night-time economy: A review of established and emerging methodologies

“Extraordinary powers for extraordinary times”: A conjunctural analysis of pandemic policing, common sense, and the abolitionist horizon

A Little Respect: Swearing, Police and Criminal Justice Discourse

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