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Australian Crime: Facts and Figures 2002

Criminal courts

Structure of criminal courts in Australia

There is a hierarchy of criminal courts at both the Commonwealth and state/territory levels.

  • Magistrate's Court: a lower court level that deals with relatively minor or summary criminal offences. Under some circumstances, these courts may also deal with less serious indictable offences. They are also responsible for conducting preliminary (committal) hearings for indictable offences.
  • Intermediate (District/County) Court: A higher court level that, together with the Supreme Court, deals with the more serious crimes. Intermediate Courts hear the majority of cases involving indictable crimes.
  • Supreme Court: the highest level of court within a state or territory. Supreme Courts deal with the most serious crimes.

Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory do not have Intermediate Courts; all relevant charges are dealt with at their respective Supreme Courts. In states with both Supreme and Intermediate Courts, a large majority of charges are decided at the Intermediate Court level.

All state, territory and Commonwealth courts handle a number of matters that appear in the court system for the first time. Almost all criminal charges are lodged for the first time at the Magistrate's Court level.

National statistics on charges, trials and sentencing of suspects at all levels of courts are not yet available in Australia. However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes a limited amount of statistics on defendants whose cases were initiated and finalised at higher criminal courts. (Higher courts comprise those at the Intermediate and Supreme Court levels, where defendants charged with serious or indictable offences are dealt with, and where appeals and civil cases are also heard.)

In addition, in recent years the Productivity Commission has produced statistics on the number of lodgments at each court level.

Source: References 6 and 7

The criminal court process

Case flows

Cases passing through the courts generally share the following common elements:

  • lodgment - the initiation of the matter with the court;
  • pre-trial discussion and mediation between the parties;
  • trial; and
  • court decision.judgment or verdict followed by sentencing.

Source: References 6 and 7

Lodgments

Most lodgments are processed by a Magistrate's Court in the relevant criminal jurisdiction.

  • Cases initiated in Magistrate's Courts accounted for 96% of all lodgments in the criminal courts.
  • Only 3% of cases were initiated in Intermediate Courts and about 1% of cases in Supreme Courts.

Source: Reference 6

Hearings

Hearings, particularly full court hearings and trials, are the primary cost driver for court administrations. Hearings encompass court trials in the criminal and civil jurisdictions, as well as inquests and inquiries in the coronial jurisdiction.

  • Nationally, there were 902,935 court hearings in 2000-2001.
  • Of these hearings, 54% were of a criminal nature.
  • The majority of criminal hearings took place in Magistrate's Courts (465,861).

Source: Reference 6

Timeliness

The duration between the lodgment of a matter with the court and its finalisation is referred to as timeliness. Generally, lower courts complete a greater proportion of their workload more quickly because the disputes and prosecutions heard are less complex than those in higher courts, and cases are of a routine or minor nature.

Committals are the first stage of hearing indictable offences in the criminal justice system. A magistrate assesses the sufficiency of evidence presented against the defendant and decides whether to commit the matter for trial in a superior court. Defendants are often held in custody pending a committal hearing or trial, if ordered. The timely conduct of the committal hearing is therefore important for timely adjudication of the charges against the defendant.

Appeals from lower courts are predominantly heard by the District Courts and Supreme Courts of the states and territories. The full bench of the Federal Court also hears appeals from a single Federal Court justice.

Court decision

In the main, defendants' cases are finalised at the higher courts in one of the following two ways:

  • adjudicated - determined whether or not guilty of the charges based on the judge's decision; and
  • non-adjudicated - a method of determining the completion of a case thereby making it effectively inactive.

Sentencing

There is a variety of sentencing options available at each court level:

  • fine;
  • good behaviour bond;
  • probation order;
  • suspended sentence;
  • community supervision;
  • community custody;
  • home detention;
  • periodic detention; and
  • imprisonment.

There are currently no national figures on the number of persons sentenced in each particular category.