Homicide Law Reform Gender And The Provocation Defence

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The operation of the partial defence of provocation has animated significant debate for more than two decades among scholars, legal practitioners, politicians and the community. In recognition of the injustices that result from its operation, criminal justice systems worldwide have conducted reviews of the law of provocation and have implemented divergent reforms targeted at minimizing the influence of gender bias in the law's operations.

Drawing on the voices of over one hundred members of the Victorian, New South Wales and English criminal justice systems, this book provides a much-needed comparative analysis of the operation of this controversial partial defence to murder, the varied approaches taken to reforming the law of provocation and the effects of these reforms in practice.

Centrally concerned with conceptual questions of gender, justice and the role of denial in the criminal justice system, Fitz-Gibbon's analysis provides a unique view of the injustice of the provocation defence alongside the unintended consequences of homicide law reform that either retains, replaces or abolishes the doctrine.

This insightful book offers valuable lessons for future jurisdictions that seek to improve the adequacy of the law's response to lethal violence and to solve the problem of provocation, and will appeal to scholars of Criminology, Socio-Legal Studies and Law, as well as domestic violence advocates and legal stakeholders.

Review: 'In this outstanding work, Kate Fitz-Gibbon explains, in fascinating detail, how legislatures across the globe have struggled to adapt the provocation defence to the modern world. Fitz-Gibbon brings the issue of gender to the fore, in deconstructing and reconstructing a defence to murder long criticised for its leniency towards men who kill in anger.' - Professor Jeremy Horder Department of Law, London School of Economics, UK This is an important study of diversity in the evolution of the law of criminal homicide as legislatures respond to the continuing crisis in intimate partner homicides.

It is unique in Australian criminal law scholarship in its reliance on the comparative experience of judges, prosecutors, defenders and law reformers in England, Victoria and New South Wales. - Ian Leader-Elliott Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia School of Law and Emeritus Fellow, Adelaide University School of Law, Australia This book, rooted in exemplary research, offers a unique opportunity for all those involved in criminology and the criminal justice process to think hard about the persistence of gendered thinking and the limitations that poses for those likely to be in receipt of the strongest sentences a court can impose.

It will become a landmark text on this issue: deservedly so. - Sandra Walklate, Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology, University of Liverpool, UK

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