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

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) today released two pivotal reports that examine the use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) to improve the safety of victim-survivors of domestic and family violence.

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) today has released a study that examines the characteristics of parricide in Australia, using 35 years of data from the National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP).

Contents

• Foreword
• Problems of research into Aborigines and the criminal justice system
  W. Clifford
• Pitfalls of evaluation in criminal justice
  Daniel Glaser

Summaries of papers

• Evaluating law reform in New South Wales
  Jeff Sutton
• Putting research to work
  Charlie Rook
• Counting prisoners
  John Walker
• Problem street drinking and the law
  Ron Okely
• Some problems of longitudinal research on deviant behaviour
  Kenneth Polk

A recent research paper highlights the steady increase in assaults against young Australians recorded by police (Bricknell 2008). National health data also show that the incidence of assault-related injuries to young Australians that result in hospitalisation continues to increase (AIHW 2008). The assault hospitalisation rate (the number of hospitalisations due to assault per 100,000 young people - those aged between 12 and 24 years) increased by 27 percent between 1996-97 and 2005-06. The increase for males (29%) was far greater than that for females (19%).

Assault is by far the most common type of violent crime in Australia. In 2010, there were 171,083 assaults compared with 17,757 sexual assaults, 14,582 robberies and 260 homicides (AIC 2011). As shown in Figure 1, compared with the rate of offending recorded in 1996–97, assault offending has increased substantially.

Figure 1 Male and female assault offending, 1996-97 and 2009-10, (rate per 100,000 relevant persons) [see attached PDF for graph]

There has been considerable media coverage about the negative outcomes associated with the abuse of alcohol and inhalants in Indigenous communities. Police in remote areas have also been concerned about the extent to which illicit drug use is having a negative impact in these communities. In 2005, the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund commissioned research into the policing implications of such use in rural and remote Australia.

More than 40 per cent of all Australian cybercrime victims fall prey to multiple types of cybercrime in a single year, with fraud and scam victims emerging as the most vulnerable. And it’s prompted a critical reminder for Australians to bolster their online safeguards.

Foreword | Online child pornography is an unintended aspect of the widespread adoption of information and communications technologies. Child pornography involves the sexual abuse of children on a global basis. It appears that a once limited trade has seen remarkable growth, with the potential to intrude into the homes and workplaces of all those connected to the internet. Occasionally, exposure to this form of pornography may be unintended, but in most cases it is deliberately sought out, retained and traded worldwide.

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has today released a paper that identifies cyber strategies that have the potential to identify victims of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and detect offenders.

Cyber strategies used to combat child sexual abuse material reviews existing research on cyber strategies to disrupt and prevent CSAM offending.

The study identified five key cyber strategies: peer-to-peer network monitoring; automated CSAM detection tools; web crawlers; pop-up warning messages; and facial recognition.

We’re pleased to announce keynote speaker Professor Rutger Leukfeldt will be presenting at the AIC 2025 Conference, which will take place in Canberra on 11-12 March 2025. Professor Leukfeldt will be speaking on Examining the pathways into cybercrime and online interventions.

Foreword | Riots such as the Cronulla and Macquarie Fields occurrences and media reports of large numbers of individuals gatecrashing parties understandably raise community concern about the prevalence and causes of group violence. This is a difficult area to research as the number of events is typically low, although their impact can be high. There are also different forms of mass groupings of individuals with higher and lower levels of associated violence.

The Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program is a crime monitoring program that focuses on illegal drug use amongst police detainees. It involves the collection of self-report and urinalysis data from people detained in seven police stations and watchhouses across Australia, with reporting on a quarterly basis. The figure below shows the percentage of adult male detainees testing positive to selected illicit drugs between 1999 (when DUMA began) and 2005. Cannabis is the drug detainees are most likely to test positive to, followed by methylamphetamine and then heroin.