Teaching resources
Finding useful, interesting and up-to-date resources for your students can be hard.
We've put together a range of sentencing resources aimed at high school and university students.
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You're welcome to download, copy and distribute the resources within your organisation but please do not re-host them on your own website - instead link back to this page to ensure you have the latest version.
Judge for Yourself workbooks
Our Judge for Yourself workbooks step teachers through how to run a Judge for Yourself session with their class over two lessons and provide learning exercises that focus on key curriculum areas using legal principles from each court case.
An extension of the highly popular Judge for Yourself online tool, each workbook focuses on one of the Council’s four interactive court cases based on real-life events from the Queensland Magistrates, District, Supreme and Childrens Courts.
- Magistrates Court—Unauthorised dealing with shop goods
- District Court—Dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death
- Supreme Court—Trafficking in a dangerous drug
- Childrens Court—Assault occasioning bodily harm
Worksheets
- Indigenous over-representation
- Key legal terms
- Re-thinking imprisonment
- Sentencing options
- Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court
- Court hierarchy (Criminal jurisdiction overview)
- Purposes of sentencing
- Sentence appeals
- Sources of law
- Locating legislation
- Know, what, learn, how chart
- Preparing sentencing remarks
- Sentencing factors
- Sentencing options for adults
- Sentencing Spotlight on breach of bail - Resource 1 (investigative)
- Sentencing Spotlight on breach of bail - Resource 2 (data analysis)
- Sentencing Spotlight on trafficking in dangerous drugs - Resource 1 (investigative)
- Sentencing Spotlight on trafficking in dangerous drugs - Resource 2 (data analysis)
Posters
Our collection of refreshed and new posters based on Sentencing Spotlights highlight sentencing trends in Queensland in an easy to understand way.
Free to download, these posters are a great resource for high school classrooms.
- Animal welfare offences
- Burglary
- Choking, suffocation and strangulation in a domestic setting
- Robbery
- Stalking
- Breach of bail offences
- Child exploitation materials
- Dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death
- Manslaughter
- Murder
- Possession of dangerous drugs
- Trafficking in dangerous drugs
Judge for Yourself
Every week in Queensland, our courts sentence people who have broken the law. But have you ever wondered how judges and magistrates decide what sentence to give?
This interactive program provides you with the opportunity to walk in the judge's shoes and 'sentence' an offender.
Hear the court case. Decide the sentence Judge for Yourself.
You can also book a free Judge for Yourself workshop to be held at your school if you are within 2 hours drive of Brisbane City.
Role of...
Find out the roles of the following judicial officers in court:
- Childrens Court Magistrate
- Defence
- Judge
- Magistrate
- Police prosecutor (magistrates court)
- Prosecutor (district & supreme court)
Other resources
- Queensland Sentencing Guide - a guide to help demystify the sentencing process
- Case in Focus - easy to understand summaries of high profile or interesting Court of Appeal judgments.
- Sentencing Matters podcast - an in-depth explanation of different aspects of sentencing in Queensland, Australia, and internationally
- Sentencing Spotlights - data on sentencing outcomes for offences finalised in Queensland Courts
- Presentation recordings - insight into sentencing issues of the day
- Sentencing definitions - a list of commonly used sentencing terms
- George’s story - the real life story of a 15-year old boy unwittingly caught up in sexting