The desirability of criminal penalties for breaches of part IV of the trade practices act

Following the introduction of criminal sanction, including jail terms, for hard core cartelisation in the United Kingdom, the Dawson Review has recently recommended that criminal penalties be introduced in Australia for individuals and corporations found to have engaged in hard core cartels. A number of reasons have been advanced to justify the introduction of criminal sanctions for this type of conduct, the most common of which are that it would bring Australia in line with other competition regimes and that criminal sanctions are more likely to provide an effective deterrent. This article evaluates those reasons, and others, to determine whether there is any adequate justification for the proposed criminal regime

Make White-Collar-Offenders Pay (Additional) Tax and Subject Them to Technological Incarceration Instead of Being a Tax Burden on Society

White-collar offenders do not scare people. There is no reason to be afraid of them. Yet, they are subjected to the most serious sanction in our legal system – prison. Every white-collar prisoner costs society over $30,000 annually. Rather than punishing white-collar offenders in a way that further depletes the public revenue, we should compel them to remedy the damage they have caused by paying additional tax. There are more intelligent, evidence-based approaches to dealing with white-collar offenders. The objectives for dealing with white-collar offenders should be to impose penalties that are proportionate to the seriousness of the crimes; ensure that the sanctions do not unnecessarily burden taxpayers and compel offenders to contribute ill-gotten gains back to the community. The proceeds from greed-motivated offenders can be diverted in a community-enhancing manner by compelling them to make additional contributions to the community. This should be achieved by developing two new criminal sanctions. The first is an offender taxation levy. The levy would operate so that two-thirds of all income derived by the offender would be payable as taxation. The total payable would be double the amount wrongfully obtained by the offender. In addition to this, the offender would be required to pay a one-off fine equal to the amount wrongfully obtained by the offender. The second is technological incarceration for serious white-collar offenses. Modern monitoring and sensor technology can be used to physically confine the movements of offenders to precise locations while monitoring their actions in real-time to greatly diminish the prospect of offending. The sanction can be operationalized in a number of different ways so that it is tailored to match the severity of the crime. Not only can the length of the monitoring be varied but the area of confinement can also be controlled. These reforms would enhance the integrity of the criminal justice system and increase public revenue – freeing up funding for the provision of important societal services and goods

Less Prison Time Matters: A Roadmap to Reducing the Discriminatory Impact of the Sentencing System Against African Americans and Indigenous Australians

The criminal justice system discriminates against African Americans. There are a number of stages of the criminal justice process. Sentencing is the sharp end of the system because this is where the community acts in its most coercive manner by intentionally inflecting hardships on offenders. African Americans comprise approximately 40% of the incarcerated population yet only about 13% of the total population. The overrepresentation of African Americans in prisons is repugnant. Despite this, lawmakers for decades have been unable or unwilling to implement reforms which ameliorate the problem. This is no longer politically or socially tolerable in light of the groundswell of support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the killing of George Floyd. This Article proposes a number of principled reforms that will immediately reduce the incarceration levels of African Americans and assist to overcome the systemic biases against this group. One of our key recommendations is for the immediate release from incarceration of all African Americans who have served three-quarters or more of their sentence. This reform builds on the early release concept underpinning the First Step Act, which commenced in December 2018, but applies it specifically to African Americans. A number of other reforms are suggested to redress the wider causes of discrimination against African Americans in the sentencing system, including placing less emphasis on the prior convictions of offenders in the sentencing calculus and improving the educational outcomes of African Americans. Discrimination faced by the most socially and economically vulnerable groups in society is not limited to the United States. Indigenous Australians are overrepresented in prisons at an even higher rate than African Americans. We argue that the solutions to ameliorating the unfair burdens on African Americans are equally appropriate in the Australian context

Non-Attendance as the Indicator of Student's Satisfaction With the Educational Process

The growth of non-attendance has raised a lot of questions among students that need to be answered. In case when during a school year, in one class consisting of twenty-five students one gets more than five thousands non-attendances, then it is no longer the issue of a single problem nor a few of them but a whole epidemic. Moreover, other classes have a similar problem, too. By conducting the survey among the students and by analyzing it one has noted a lack of motivation and responsibility towards school related duties. Consequentially there has been a growth of non-attendance among a majority of students. The existing system of sanctioning does not bring neither prevention nor positive results. Therefore, one needs to modernize the educational process in order to motivate both students and teachers and that will function in a way to reduce non-attendance. In order to succeed, one needs to involve every social partner, from parents to potential future employers.non-attendance, accomplishment, survey, measures and procedures