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Foreword | The issue of juvenile drug use and crime is of interest to a wide section of society. This paper examines the drug-taking patterns of a group of juveniles who were detained by police and interviewed as part of the Drug Use Monitoring Australia (DUMA) project. Most juveniles (around two-thirds) also gave a urine sample that was analysed for six classes of drugs. This paper reports on the 493 juveniles whose details are in the DUMA database.

Foreword | Australia has a long tradition of providing welfare payments to vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens. The Australian Government introduced the aged pension in 1909 and the invalid pension in 1910. During World War II, and in the decades since, numerous additional benefits have been made available to a wide range of recipients. Almost one-third of Australians now receive some kind of direct welfare payment. For many, welfare provides a permanent, secure source of income.

Contents

• Personal conflict : the origin of most violence
• Early intervention
• Litigation versus mediation
• What is alternative dispute resolution?
• Referral
• Crime and dispute settlement
• Victims
• Domestic intervention

Foreword | In recent years, it has been recognised that child complainants in the criminal justice system can experience difficulties over and above those of other complainants and that children can experience the court process as extremely traumatising. This can be exacerbated if children are complainants in child sexual offence matters and if they have to give evidence against a family member. This paper has three primary aims. First, it outlines the major factors that contribute to making court processes harrowing for child complainants.

Foreword | International surveys have suggested that around one-third of all adult women will, at some point in their lifetime, experience abuse perpetrated by an intimate male partner. Domestic violence is considered to be one of the major risk factors affecting women’s health in Australia and there is a need for the community to respond in ways that reduce the likelihood of further violence occurring. One way of doing this is to deliver programs that aim to reduce the risk of known perpetrators committing further offences.

Foreword | As part of a global effort to fight mass-marketed consumer scams, each year consumer protection agencies in 33 western countries participate in a month of fraud prevention activities to raise awareness of the problem and to provide advice to consumers on how to avoid being victimised. In Australia and New Zealand, 19 government agencies comprise the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT), which conducted a campaign in March 2007 with the theme 'Scams target you - protect yourself'.

Digital evidence

While the computer is sometimes likened to a smoking gun, it is much more a silent witness. Careful investigation is required to uncover and preserve what it might say, and sophisticated forensic analysis must be applied to relay that to the court. In fact, despite the impression sometimes conveyed in the media, it is not always easy to investigate or prosecute high tech crime. The main evidential difficulties are the ephemeral nature of records such as ISP data logs and the capacity for the internet to be used anonymously (AGEC 2000).

Foreword | The present research is the first of its kind in Australia to simultaneously examine individual, family and neighbourhood predictors of adolescent antisocial behaviour. The study draws on two key data sources—Australian Bureau of Statistics census data and the Mater University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP). The MUSP is a prospective longitudinal study of mothers and their children in Brisbane, Australia; the current project draws on data from birth through to adolescence (age 14 years).

Australia's criminal justice system has been witness to significant transformation, primarily in response to a number of important factors including:

Foreword | In 2003, 1,821 males and 5,669 females aged under 15 years were recorded by police as victims of sexual assault but we know from crime victim surveys that sexual assault is the crime least likely to be reported to the police. We also know from research that adult sex offenders and victims are significantly more likely to have suffered abuse as children. A significant proportion of this abuse occurs within the family by intra-familial offenders.

This project was funded by the Crime Prevention Branch of the Criminal Justice Division, Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department.

This paper is taken from the report of research undertaken with the assistance of a grant from the Criminology Research Council.