Ned Kelly, John Barry and the role of social activism in criminal justice reform: Excerpts from the 2010 John Barry Memorial Lecture
| Published date | 01 April 2011 |
| Date | 01 April 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865810393103 |
| Author | Peter Norden |
| Subject Matter | Lecture |
Lecture
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
44(1) 143–150
Ned Kelly, John Barry and
! The Author(s) 2011
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Excerpts from the 2010
John Barry Memorial Lecture
Peter Norden
Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
This public lecture, presented on the 130th Anniversary of the execution of Ned Kelly, each
year commemorates the contribution made to the field of criminology by the late Mr Justice
Barry, of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Using the heuristic method of social research, it
examines the place of social activism in the field of criminal justice reform. The paper was
presented on the eve of a Victorian State election, where debate about law and order issues
predominated, as has occurred in many States and Territories around Australia in recent
years. The author calls for a substantial review of the operation and effectiveness of the
Australian criminal justice system.
Keywords
activism, crime, police, prison, reform
On this day, 11 November 1880, Ned Kelly was hanged from the gallows of the Old
Melbourne Gaol. Five thousand stood outside in protest, a sizeable crowd given the
population of Melbourne 130 years ago was only 280,000. Close to 50,000 signatures
were attached to the Petition of Mercy that was submitted to the Executive Council.
The invitation to present this John Barry memorial lecture on the 130th anniversary of
the execution of Ned Kelly, encouraged me to share something of my own journey and
some of the lessons learnt from my own exposure to the Australian criminal justice system.
I have set the focus of my address this evening on the role of activism in criminal
justice reform.
Heuristic research
I wish to present two scenarios from my prior engagement with the Australian crim-
inal justice system that are representative of the need for a systemic change in
Corresponding author:
Peter Norden, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
Email: pnorden@unimelb.edu.au
144
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 44(1)
our nation’s approach to crime. Both of these experiences reinforced in my own
mind the need to maintain an activist defence of human rights and civil
liberties and to contribute to a more productive formulation of criminal justice
policy and practice.
I have undertaken much of this analysis according to what has been identified as
‘heuristic research’. Moustakas (1990: 12) describes ‘heuristic research’ as involving ‘self-
search, self-dialogue, and self-discovery’. He suggests ‘the research question and the
methodology flow out of inner awareness, meaning and inspiration’. In this heuristic
process, I have been, ‘personally involved in working through these key experiences of
the past, searching for qualities, conditions and relationships that underlie a fundamen-
tal question, issue or concern’ (Moustakas, 1990: 11).
Following this analysis, I address the current challenges faced by State and Territory
governments around Australia in finding more effective solutions to breaches of the
criminal law in order to shape a more cohesive, inclusive, and, in essence, a safer
community.
The first scenario is the shooting deaths of dozens of Victorians by police.
Police use of deadly force
Police Shootings in Victoria 1987–1989: You Deserve To Know The Truth. This was the
title of a book written by the families of Mark Militano, Graeme Jensen and Jedd
Houghton, with the support of legal staff from the Flemington/Kensington
Community Legal Centre and published by Fitzroy Legal Service in 1992
(Flemington/Kensington Legal Centre, 1992). In total 11 men had been shot dead by
Victorian police officers over the previous two years. In the foreword to that publication,
I wrote: ‘The suspicion that revenge has been allowed to overcome reason, following the
tragic Walsh Street killings, must be answered’. Two Victorian police officers were sub-
sequently charged with the murder of Gary Abdullah, but the case did not proceed to
trial because of lack of independent witnesses.
Militano, Jensen and Houghton were three of the young men who had been killed by
police, the first two in relation to suspected armed robberies that occurred in Melbourne
in the mid-1980s and Houghton as part of the investigation following the tragic killing of
two young police constables, Tynan and Eyre, in Walsh Street Prahran on 12 October
1988. The number of deaths as a result of police shootings continued to rise over the
following years. Between January and May 1994, there were seven deaths as a result of
the use of firearms by members of the Victorian Police Force. How could this be
explained given that in New South Wales, with a similar population and similar patterns
of criminal behaviour, there had been only a fraction of this number of deaths resulting
from police shootings over the same period of...
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