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New studies reveal the changing culture within outlaw motorcycle gangs in Australia

Foreword | The volume of digital forensic evidence is rapidly increasing, leading to large backlogs. In this paper, a Digital Forensic Data Reduction and Data Mining Framework is proposed. Initial research with sample data from South Australia Police Electronic Crime Section and Digital Corpora Forensic Images using the proposed framework resulted in significant reduction in the storage requirements—the reduced subset is only 0.196 percent and 0.75 percent respectively of the original data volume.

Foreword | Research in the past decade has found that certain ways of responding to domestic partner abusers, particularly psycho-educational approaches, can be effective in modifying abusive behaviours. The study described in this paper sought to classify male domestic partner abusers by certain identified characteristics and determine whether they responded differently to a Men's Behaviour Change Program conducted by community agencies in regional Victoria.

Foreword | This paper summarises the results of a small-scale study into the online interactions of suspected paedophiles with undercover Australian police officers posing as male children. The study provides insight to an under-researched area of how persons with a sexual interest in male children interact with potential victims and whether these interactions differ from online engagements with female children.

Foreword | Sport and physical activity programs provide an effective vehicle through which personal and social development in young people can be positively affected. This paper summarises the main findings from a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology on sport, physical activity and antisocial behaviour in youth, funded by the Australian Sports Commission (Morris et al. 2003). The study identified and described programs that use sporting activities to reduce antisocial behaviour in youth across Australia.

Potentially damaging forms of malicious software (malware) such as viruses, worms and Trojans infect large numbers of computers around the world and interfere with internet-based telecommunications (High Tech Crime Brief no.10). Other forms of intrusive program, not necessarily as damaging as, but potentially hiding these more virulent types of malware, circulate as adware, spyware, spam and spim.

Key findings

• The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM II) program operates in 10 cities across the United States and captures drug use information from police detainees using urinalysis procedures comparable to Australia’s own Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program.

Foreword | One way that Australian correctional authorities can safeguard the community is by incapacitating offenders and keeping them away from potential victims. The community can also be protected in the longer term by minimising the likelihood of ex-prisoners reoffending after they are released. One strategy for reducing the risk of recidivism is the provision of treatment, services and support to prisoners during their incarceration and after their release. This approach is gaining prominence in Australia and internationally.

The AIC has recently undertaken research investigating the use of fire in homicides in Australia. The National Homicide Monitoring Program database, containing data on all homicides known to police in Australia between 1989-90 and 2004-05, was used to identify the 100 homicide incidents where fire was responsible for the death, or the death was recorded as occurring in association with the arson.

Foreword | As police are often the first point of contact in domestic and family violence incidents they are in a unique position to respond to, intervene in, and be proactive about, preventing family violence. With indications that the volume of recorded violence has increased and the complexity of family violence matters has increased police workloads, police face many challenges in responding in an effective and timely manner to reported incidents.

Foreword | Illicit drug markets are, by definition, unregulated, unaccountable and unpredictable. Operators in this market do not enjoy access to the sort of economic data upon which traders in legal commodities depend; they cannot insure their products against loss; transaction costs are high; and, most significantly, those involved in the trade are susceptible to changes in activity by law enforcement or their competitors.

in: The Age, 23 April 2001, I.T.1 pp. 1,12.

Ever since human beings began to claim ownership over property, other human beings have sought to take it from them. In the past quarter of a century, with the arrival of digital technology, both property and theft have taken on new forms.

Money, music, text and video are now commonly stored and transferred electronically in the form of a long series of zeroes and ones. And they can be stolen with a laptop computer from one's bedroom.

Foreword | At 30 June 2006, 23 percent of Australian police were women, almost double the percentage in 1996. Despite this change, the issues relevant a decade earlier remain today, namely difficulties in recruitment and deployment and the low representation of women within senior ranks. This paper examines the career paths of one cohort of police sworn in during 1991 in a number of jurisdictions, to examine what differences, if any, exist between the male and female personnel in terms of recruitment, rank attainment, departures and deployment.

Foreword | Most prisoners are highly likely to re-offend once released into the community and as a consequence, have a high rate of return to prison. This is a costly cycle: in 2004-05 $1.7 billion was spent on 120 custodial facilities housing a daily average of 24,092 offenders. Given increasing imprisonment rates these costs will continue to escalate unless we actively seek to prevent re-offending among prisoners post-release.

Foreword | The true extent of people trafficking is difficult to gauge, in part because of low levels of reporting and identification of trafficked persons, the clandestine nature of the crime, and a lack of reliable data and systematic data collections, The data collected by the International Organization for Migration in its Counter Trafficking Module Database is unique in the breadth and depth of information collected regarding the experiences of trafficked persons.