Criminal Characters

Investigating the lives of historical offenders in Australia

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Crime in Popular Culture

Just as it does today, crime permeated popular culture throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Australian audiences eagerly consumed stories about criminality presented in fiction, film, music and the writings of those with some personal experience of crime or the criminal justice system.

These works have played a role in shaping public attitudes towards crime, and societal conceptions of who criminals are. In order to convey a sense of the types of perspectives on crime that permeated Australian culture, and how these representations changed over time, the pages below present timelines about significant works produced across different genres.

Fiction

Film

Music

Personal Accounts

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Supported by

This research project is supported by the University of Technology Sydney through its Chancellors Postdoctoral Research Fellowship scheme.

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