"People don't seem to handle their anger well any more." These words were spoken by an official of an industry staff association whose members are widely subjected to customer harassment. The comment highlights an apparently growing phenomenon in the workplace: aggression expressed by consumers/clients/customers and others toward service providers.
Occupational violence has been defined as "incidents where staff are abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances related to their work, including commuting to and from work, involving the explicit or implicit challenge to their safety, wellbeing or health." In the previous issue of this series (no. 9), the three major types of occupational violence were described (external, client-initiated, and internal organisational). Here, measures for the prevention of occupational violence are summarised.
Unfortunately, the complete elimination and prevention of homicide is unlikely in the foreseeable future. However, strategies exist that can be used to reduce the likelihood of homicide victimisation and offending where the risk is greatest.
Children are responsible for nearly three quarters of deliberately lit fires. There are two basic groups of child firesetters - those who are curious about fire and those who light fires with deliberate intent. Curiosity firesetters are typically quite young (five to ten years old) and usually have no criminal intent. On the other hand, the reasons older children light fires are usually to do with aggression, vandalism, antisocial behaviour, sensation or attention seeking, or in response to social skills deficits.
The Australian Institute of Criminology's Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program provides information through urinalysis and interviews on illegal drug use among people detained in a police station or watchhouse. The chart below highlights the differences between the nine sites in adult male detainees testing positive to cannabis, methylamphetamine, heroin and cocaine during 2006. Consistent across the sites, cannabis was the most widely used drug, with a range of 41 to 67 percent of detainees testing positive.
In 2007, the Community attitudes to privacy survey was conducted by the Wallis Consulting Group for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Included in the issues examined was a series of questions concerning awareness and experience of identity fraud and theft (IFT). More than 1,500 respondents took part in the latest survey, which showed increased levels of concern in the community over the prevalence of IFT since the previous comparable survey conducted in 2004. Nine percent of those surveyed said they had been a victim of IFT, while 17 percent said they knew a victim.
A total of 1,445 firearms were reported stolen in Australia between 1 July 2005 and 30 June 2006 in 634 incidents (Bricknell & Mouzos 2007). This was a decrease of 25 firearms and 31 incidents from the previous year. Of these incidents, just over one-half of the firearms had been stored in a firearm safe or other secure receptacle at the time of the theft (55%). In a further nine percent of incidents, the firearms were left in a vehicle and in seven percent they had been kept in a (usually) unlocked cupboard or wardrobe.
Armed robbery in Australia generally targets either an individual or an organisation. Some organisations are more likely to be targeted than others for reasons including differences in the amount of money held at the location, varying levels of security measures and the number of possible witnesses. In 2005, among selected organisational types approximately two in five (40%), armed robberies targeted a retail setting, although this type of location encompasses a wide range of commercial businesses.
Figures from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey show that some 806,000 people in Australia experienced personal fraud in a recent 12-month period (ABS 2008). The survey, funded by the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce, showed personal financial losses of almost $977 million, with a median financial loss of $453 per person. The victimisation rate was five percent of the population aged 15 years or more: three percent through identity fraud, and two percent through scams.
The overwhelming majority of jurors understand judicial instructions and judges' summing-up of evidence in criminal trials, according to a report by the New South Wales (NSW) Law Reform Commission and the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (Trimboli 2008). The report is based on a survey from July 2007 to February 2008 of 1,221 jurors involved in selected criminal trials in the Supreme Court and District Court of NSW. Respondents completed the surveys at the end of the relevant trial, juror participation being voluntary.
Since 2003–04, government funding for justice services in Australia has experienced an average annual growth rate of 3.4 percent according to the Report on Government Services 2009 (Productivity Commission 2009). Net justice-funded expenditure (i.e. expenditure minus revenue from own sources) finances police services, court administration for criminal and civil matters and corrective services. The total expense for justice services has risen consistently from $9.4b in 2003–04 to over $10.7b in 2007–08.
An international comparison of the perceived level of corruption among public officials and politicians in 159 countries has found that Australia is in the top 10 countries least likely to exhibit this type of corruption. Transparency International and the University of Passau compile the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) from expert surveys of business people and analysts from around the world, including local country experts. Scores can range from 10 ('highly clean') to 0 ('highly corrupt'). This year the scores ranged from 9.7 for Iceland to 1.7 for Chad and Bangladesh.
Over the past four years the rate of stolen motor vehicles has declined significantly. In 2003-04 there were 88,030 vehicles stolen in Australia. Not unexpectedly trucks, plant/equipment and buses were the least likely to be stolen. Motorcycles were more likely to be stolen than any other type of vehicle, with a theft rate of 15 per 1,000 registrations, followed by vans, sedans and station wagons.
According to the Report on government services 2006, government expenditure on justice in Australia totalled $8.4 billion in 2004-05. Justice expenditure includes federal and state government expenditure on corrective services, civil courts, criminal courts and police services. This amounts to approximately nine percent of total spending by all Australian governments, a slight decrease on the 12 percent recorded in 1996-97, when the current format of reporting on government expenditure was adopted.
Serious Fraud in Australia and New Zealand is a report presenting the results of a study by the Australian Institute of Criminology and PricewaterhouseCoopers of serious fraud cases that went to court in Australia and New Zealand in 1998 and 1999. There were 155 completed files identified from police and prosecution agencies throughout Australia and New Zealand involving serious fraud offences (generally involving sums in excess of $100,000). The general profile of the 183 persons convicted of serious fraud offences was that they tended to be in their mid-40s and male.