The 8th edition of Criminal Laws maintains the distinctive features which have established the book as a leading Australian work for 35 years. It has been extensively updated, including legislation, case law, and policy. It features the latest research on the operation and impact of criminal laws, from policing to punishment, along with up-to-date quantitative and qualitative data that illuminate the lived experience of crime victims, accused persons and offenders. The 8th edition features a large and strong author team with expertise across criminal law, criminalisation theory, policing, criminology and crime policy.

Criminal Laws remains, as one review put it, simultaneously a “textbook, casebook, handbook and reference work”. It is ideal for criminal law and criminal justice courses as a teaching text, combining as it does primary sources with extensive critical commentary and a contextual perspective. It is indispensable to practitioners for its detailed coverage of substantive law. Its coverage of research developments, extensive references and inter-disciplinary approach, make it a first point of call for researchers from all disciplines.

Highlights of the 8th edition include discussion and analysis of:

• major changes to sexual assault law as a result of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Consent Reforms) Act 2021, including the adoption of ‘affirmative consent’ principles;
• the new domestic violence offence that criminalises ‘coercive control’;
• the codified defence of mental health impairment or cognitive impairment, and other changes introduced by the Mental Health and Cognitive Impairment Forensic Provisions Act 2020;
• developments in fraud offences, including the meaning of financial advantage, the relationship between deception and dishonesty in fraud, and the test for causation;
• changes to the Bail Act 2013 that continue the trend of restricting access to bail;
• the role of criminal law, policing and ‘on-the-spot’ fines during the COVID-19 pandemic;
• recent coronial inquests that highlight the continued failure of governments to implement key recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991);
• the slow pace of change on raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility;
• reports of the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) on the operation of police powers, including strip searches, the Suspect Targeted Management Plan (STMP) and consorting;
• developments in the criminalisation of hate speech, including the new offence of knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol;
• the operation of the Early Drug Diversion Initiative;
• expansion of the criminal law and police powers to control and punish protests, including the criminalisation of climate change activism;
• the Walama List, Aboriginal Community Justice Reports and developments in Justice Reinvestment;
• recent case law on the combination of complicity rules and constructive murder; and
• important criminal law and sentencing decisions from all court levels, and the findings and recommendations of inquiries by law reform commissions, parliamentary committees and Royal Commissions.