Rick Sarre

This book summarises the latest findings of Australian and international crime prevention researchers and suggests how future policies based upon their evidence could and should be better shaped and employed by policymakers. Governments all over the world are constantly endeavouring to make their communities safer and the lives of their citizens less fearful. For decades now, criminological researchers, challenged to assist in this task, have been asking: “What is working to reduce crime?” “What could work better in preventing crime before it erupts?” “What have we not tried, but could try in the field of crime control?” Pleasingly, the research outputs on this subject are voluminous and growing. They regularly inform policymaking in productive ways. This, in turn, has led and continues to lead to good crime prevention outcomes, but a lot more could be done. The author sets out twelve key priorities, designed to reduce victimisation, and tackle street crime and white-collar crime especially, each of them based upon a social justice framework. These priorities draw upon his extensive writings on the topic of law and criminology over the past forty years. There is, he concludes, far more value in tackling the societal factors that allow crime to emerge, grow and persist than applying a strict application of the criminal law and the justice system that feeds upon it.

This book arises from a research project funded in Australia by the Criminology Research Council. The topic, bail reform, has attracted attention from criminologists and law reformers over many years. In the USA, a reform movement has argued that risk analysis and pre-trial services should replace the bail bond system (the state of California may introduce this system in 2020). In the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, there have been concerns about tough bail laws that have contributed to a rise in imprisonment rates. The approach in this book is distinctive. The inter-disciplinary authors include criminologists, an academic lawyer and a forensic psychologist together with qualitative researchers with backgrounds in sociology and anthropology. The book advances a policy argument through presenting descriptive statistics, interviews with practitioners and detailed accounts of bail applications and their outcomes. There is discussion of methodological issues throughout the book, including the challenges of obtaining data from the courts.

This book arises from a research project funded in Australia by the Criminology Research Council. The topic, bail reform, has attracted attention from criminologists and law reformers over many years. In the USA, a reform movement has argued that risk analysis and pre-trial services should replace the bail bond system (the state of California may introduce this system in 2020). In the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, there have been concerns about tough bail laws that have contributed to a rise in imprisonment rates. The approach in this book is distinctive. The inter-disciplinary authors include criminologists, an academic lawyer and a forensic psychologist together with qualitative researchers with backgrounds in sociology and anthropology. The book advances a policy argument through presenting descriptive statistics, interviews with practitioners and detailed accounts of bail applications and their outcomes. There is discussion of methodological issues throughout the book, including the challenges of obtaining data from the courts.