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37 Sydney L. Rev. 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/sydney37 and id is 1 raw text is: Public Intoxication in NSW: The Contours of Criminalisation Luke McNamara* and Julia Quiltert Abstract This article traces the history of the regulation of public intoxication in New South Wales (NSW) from the early 1800s to the present. We argue that although the formal legal status of public drunkenness and drinking has changed over time, and although different approaches have been prominent at different points in the history of NSW, public intoxication has been consistently and continuously criminalised for almost two centuries, despite official 'decriminalisation' in 1979. Shifts in regulatory modalities - including offence definitions, police powers, the involvement of local councils and enforcement practices - have been associated with significant changes in how the nature of the problem of public intoxication is conceived and how the persona of the 'public drunk' is constructed. Perceived at different times as immoral, annoying and pitiable, most recently, individuals who are intoxicated in public are increasingly seen as 'dangerous' and as posing a risk to other members of the community. The threat to public safety and the fear that innocent members of the public might be subjected to random violence have become major drivers of policymaking and law reform in this area, and have produced a less forgiving and more punitive approach to public intoxication. I Introduction In recent years, the problem of 'alcohol-fuelled violence' has been the subject of intense media scrutiny, and the trigger for a number of significant changes to New South Wales (NSW) criminal laws and liquor licensing laws.2 Much of the attention has focused on the dangers posed by young men who, while drunk in public, engage in random attacks, sometimes with fatal consequences.3 In this article, we locate these contemporary debates and legal developments in the Professor, School of Law, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. Email: lukem@uow.edu.au. t Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. Email: jquilterguow.edu.au. See Julia Quilter, 'One Punch Laws, Mandatory Minimums and Alcohol-Fuelled as an Aggravated Factor: Implications for NSW Criminal Law' (2014) 3(1) International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 81. 2 Lenny Roth, 'Liquor Licensing Restrictions to Address Alcohol-related Violence in NSW: 2008 to 2014' (Research Paper E-Brief No 4/2014, NSW Parliamentary Research Service, Parliament of New South Wales, 2014). Julia Quilter, 'Responses to the Death of Thomas Kelly: Taking Populism Seriously' (2013) 24(3) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 439; Julia Quilter, 'The Thomas Kelly Case: Why a One Punch Law is not the Answer' (2014) 38(1) Criminal Law Journal 16.

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