Course

Explaining Punishment - LAWS8015

Faculty: Faculty of Law

School: Faculty of Law

Course Outline: See below

Campus: Sydney

Career: Postgraduate

Units of Credit: 6

EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)

Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 2

Enrolment Requirements:

Pre-requisite: Academic Program must be 9200 or 9210 or 9230 or 5740 or 9285 or 5285 or 9220 or 5750.

Excluded: JURD7615

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 provides a theoretical and policy-oriented consideration of how and why we punish criminal offending, particularly through the use of imprisonment. The course has an inter-disciplinary approach to penology which draws on law, history, sociology, and criminology.


LLM Specialisation

Recommended Prior Knowledge

None.

Course Objectives

  • To explore punishment and penalty in modern society
  • To provide an understanding of the relationship between race, gender and class and the administration of the punishment
  • To consider the relationship between punishment and social structure, and the significance of punishment for socio-political order
  • To consider the relationship between sentencing and punishment
  • To explore various theoretical contributions to the concept of punishment
  • To analyse contemporary issues in punishment and the related public policy dilemmas
  • To encourage students to develop their skills in inter-disciplinary research

Main Topics

  • Contemporary law and public policy issues, including juvenile detention, women in prison, the imprisonment of ethnic and racial minorities, inequality and imprisonment, privatisation, the use of torture, deaths in custody, the death penalty, and the impact of law and order policies on punishment
  • Consideration of various theoretical contributions to our understanding of punishment including the work of Durkheim, Foucault, Weber, Marxist approaches, and contemporary writers like David Garland and John Pratt

Assessment

Class Participation – 10%
Seminar presentation and Essay synopsis – 20%
Research essay (5,000 words) – 70%
Law Books

Study Levels

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