Overview

This unit focusses on a specific aspect of the criminal justice system, offering students an opportunity for close analytical engagement with the laws, theories, practices and Indigenous knowledges pertaining to young people who offend. The unit will introduce and challenge students to understand the laws pertaining to youth offending and the means of analysis to understand the motivations, which may result in young people coming into contact with the criminal justice system. As such, students will become familiar with various statutory regimes that mediate their contact across the states of Australia and also with the theoretical explanations and methodologies to understand and engage in response to this category of crime.

Requisites

Prerequisites
CRI10001 Criminology: Theory and Practice

Rule
CRI10001 Criminology: Theory and Practice
OR
CRI10002 Fundamentals of Criminology

Teaching Periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Semester 1
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
26-February-2024
26-May-2024
Last self-enrolment date
10-March-2024
Census date
31-March-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
12-April-2024
Results released date
02-July-2024
Teaching Period 2
Location
Online
Start and end dates
08-July-2024
06-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
21-July-2024
Census date
02-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
23-August-2024
Results released date
29-October-2024

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Develop a theoretically-informed perspective of the criminal genesis of youth crime
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of the criminal justice system and the laws that pertain to youth offending through analysis and research
  • Consider the effectiveness of the criminal justice system through an analysis of law making and sentencing responses to youth crime
  • Review the criminal justice system through analysis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' worldviews, histories and standpoints
  • Analyse and develop evidence-based recommendations for adaptions and changes to the criminal justice system as it relates to youth crime

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Online
Lecture
1.00 12 weeks 12
On-campus
Class
2.00 12 weeks 24
Specified Activities
Various
2.00 12 weeks 24
Unspecified Activities
Various
7.50 12 weeks 90
TOTAL150

Swinburne Online

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Live Online
Class
3.00 12 weeks 36
Online
Directed Online Learning and Independent Learning
9.50 12 weeks 114
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
Assignment 1Individual 25% 
Assignment 2Group 35% 
Assignment 3Individual 40% 2,3,5 

Content

  • Criminological theory
  • Young people, and law and order
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and the criminal justice system
  • Restorative Justice
  • Courts and youth
  • Law and order regimes and legislative response to youth crime

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.