Review of 'JV Barry - A Life' By Mark Finnane (with the assistance of John Myrtle): (2007) Sydney: UNSW Press, xiv + 322 pp, ISBN 978 086840 845 3

Abstract

The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology published its first issue in 1967. The preface to that issue was written by John Barry (1903–1969). Barry, a judge of the Victorian Supreme Court, was also the inaugural president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology established a few months before. His presence at this seminal moment in the history of Australian criminology no doubt conferred judicial dignity on the fledgling endeavour. But, as Mark Finnane's biography of Barry shows, he was no mere ceremonial figurehead at the birth and early development of the new discipline but one of its formative figures. The biography (written with the assistance of John Myrtle from the Australian Institute of Criminology) is a portrait of the intellectual, social, political and personal life of Barry. It provides an invaluable social and intellectual history of the early years of the criminology discipline in Australia (also see Finnane, 1998; 2006), but it does much more than this. Barry is perhaps most remembered for his contribution to Australian criminology but this was but one of the projects that dominated an energetic and eventful life in the law, politics and public policy spanning the first two-thirds of the 20th century.