Highlights
Instructions
This assignment is a research essay. You are required to undertake independent research, extending beyond the unit materials, to complete the assignment. A good place to start your research is the list of texts in the course outline; you can ‘follow the footnotes’ to develop your research.
You must answer both questions.
You should justify your answers by reference to relevant case law, legislation and, where appropriate, support your argument by reference to the secondary literature and policy debates.
The question is asking you to think critically about criminalisation and the scope of the criminal law. Research on criminalisation (eg Ashworth and Horder 2013) will be relevant. There is not a lot of published legal academic material about ‘catfishing’ so you may need to look at research addressing related topics (such as online abuse or ‘coercive control’). If you draw on this material, you should give some thought to the ways in which ‘catfishing’ is similar to/distinct from other practices governed by the criminal law.
Question
Faced with growing public concern aboutse occurring online abu, and following recent high- profile cases, the NSW government is considering creating a new offence of ‘catfishing’.
The new offence would criminalise the practice of creating a fictional online persona on social media in order to deceive or abuse someone or manipulate and control them in some way.
Elliot Spitzer MP, the youngest independent parliamentarian in the NSW legislature, is particularly concerned about this because he is a big Casey Donovan fan and she has reported that she was the victim of ‘catfishing’. He has developed a bill (‘the bill’) containing a draft offence of ‘catfishing’. The offence provision states:
A person (A) commits an offence of ‘catfishing’ if:
a. A repeatedly or continuously engages in deceptive or manipulative conduct
online that is directed towards another person (B); and
b. The conduct is not motivated by financial gain; and
c. The conduct has a serious effect on B, and d. A intends the conduct to have or knows it will have a serious effect on B.
The bill defines ‘serious effect’ as conduct that:
has caused the victim to make decisions or change their behaviour or has otherwise had a substantial adverse impact on the victim’s day to day activities.
The proposed maximum penalty for the offence is 5 years imprisonment or a fine or both.
Marilyn Bishop MP is an independent parliamentarian representing a trendy inner-city electorate with a high proportion of young people. She opposes the creation of a new offence. She argues that ‘more law’ is not the solution to contemporary dating and romance problems, that the existing criminal offence of stalking/intimidation is sufficient, and that the new offence is drawn too broadly, meaning that, if enacted, it would capture ‘innocent’ behaviour that should not be subject to regulation by the state.
The government is considering whether to support the bill. You are a new graduate working for the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet.
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