Groves Andrew, Nagy Victoria
Flinders University, College of Business, Government and Law, Adelaide, Australia.
Criminology, College of Business, Government and Law, Ring Road, Bedford Park, 5042 Australia.
Crime Law Soc Change. 2022;78(3):295-319. doi: 10.1007/s10611-022-10025-2. Epub 2022 Apr 1.
Contract cheating remains a significant problem for universities and higher education (HE) generally, both within Australia and internationally. In 2020, the Australian Federal Government passed legislation establishing a new criminal offence, criminalising the provision or advertisement of academic cheating services by individuals and businesses. This legislation represents the Australian Government's formal commitment to a criminal justice response to address the problem of contract cheating behaviour, which seeks to prevent and minimise the use and/or promotion of such cheating services within the higher education sector. This paper provides a political discourse analysis (PDA) and interpretive policy analysis (IPA) of Australian Parliamentary Hansard documents regarding debate of the Our findings suggest a discord between the putative purpose of this legislation and the way the contract cheating problem has been represented in Australian Parliament. We argue that debates regarding the solution to, or at least how to address contract cheating first need to understand and agree on the problem if they are to meaningfully prevent crime. Our analysis exposes the politicisation of the higher education sector and associated discourse, where concern about contract cheating, in this case, was used as a vehicle to further rationalise ongoing Government paternalism and interference in tertiary institutions, underscoring the need for critical evaluation of criminological interventions.
合同作弊对于澳大利亚国内及国际的大学和高等教育来说，总体上仍然是一个重大问题。2020年，澳大利亚联邦政府通过立法设立了一项新的刑事犯罪，将个人和企业提供或宣传学术作弊服务定为犯罪行为。这项立法体现了澳大利亚政府对刑事司法回应的正式承诺，以解决合同作弊行为问题，旨在防止并尽量减少高等教育领域内此类作弊服务的使用和/或推广。本文对澳大利亚议会记录文件中有关该立法辩论进行了政治话语分析（PDA）和解释性政策分析（IPA）。我们的研究结果表明，这项立法的假定目的与澳大利亚议会中对合同作弊问题的呈现方式之间存在不一致。我们认为，关于解决合同作弊问题的辩论，或者至少是关于如何应对合同作弊的辩论，如果要切实预防犯罪，首先需要理解并就该问题达成共识。我们的分析揭示了高等教育部门及相关话语的政治化现象，在这种情况下，对合同作弊的担忧被用作进一步使政府持续的家长式作风和对高等院校的干预合理化的手段，凸显了对犯罪学干预措施进行批判性评估的必要性。
