Search

Foreword | Concern regarding the diversion and non-medical use of prescription pharmaceuticals continues to grow as anecdotal evidence and other research points to a sizeable increase in the illegal market for such drugs. Estimating the prevalence of illegal use and understanding how pharmaceutical drugs come to be traded in the illegal drug market remain key research priorities for policymakers and practitioners in both the public health and law enforcement sectors.

Bushfire arson is problematic across all states and territories of Australia. While the vast majority of deliberately lit fires are typically small, the cumulative impact on the community and environment is significant: adversely affecting the quality of lives of people within close proximity; potentially endangering property via ember attacks; wasting valuable firefighting resources; and drastically impacting on the health and biodiversity of remnant vegetation in or near urban areas which have not evolved to cope with the frequency of fires to which they are subjected.

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has announced funding that will support Australian academics to undertake important crime and justice research.

Foreword | Adolescents who develop severe conduct disorders are at greater risk of becoming involved in juvenile crime, including property crime, interpersonal violence, theft, arson and illegal substance use. Prior research has found that dysfunctional parenting practices often place children at risk of developing conduct problems and are among the strongest predictors of later delinquent behaviour. Various programs have been developed to assist parents in improving their parenting skills.

What is graffiti?

Graffiti refers to the act of marking property with writing, symbols or graphics (Weisel 2002; White 2001). For the purpose of this paper, graffiti is defined as the marking of other people's property without their consent. In this context, graffiti is illegal and in Australia it is a persistent problem that attracts a variety of penalties.

Contents

About the editor

List of contributors

Introduction

1. Crime commission processes in child sexual abuse material production and distribution: A systematic review
Jesse Cale, Thomas Holt, Benoit Leclerc, Sara Singh and Jacqueline Drew

2. Child sexual abuse material on the darknet: A script analysis of how offenders operate
Benoit Leclerc, Jacqueline Drew, Thomas J Holt, Jesse Cale and Sara Singh

Foreword | Investigating missing persons cases is a complex field. There is no single service responsible for the investigation or the provision of support to those who are found, or to the family and friends of missing persons. However, police services across Australia play a crucial role in responding to reports of missing people, complemented by non-government search agencies such as The Salvation Army and the Australian Red Cross.

Foreword | As part of global regulatory measures designed to minimise risks of money laundering and financing of terrorism, financial institutions and other designated businesses in most countries are required to report certain financial transactions to government regulators. This has increased the probability that transactions involving the proceeds of crime will be detected and reported officially.

Foreword | It has been estimated that Australia expends between $1.3 and $2 billion annually on drug law enforcement activity. Such a high level of effort and commitment means that it is vitally important to have good systems in place to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement action to reduce drug problems in the Australian community. However, Australia's drug law enforcement activities are undertaken in conjunction with efforts to reduce demand and levels of drug related harm, coordinated through the National Drug Strategy.

Foreword | Bank robbery is costly at both a human level and a financial level. In order to minimise these costs, crime prevention measures need to be applied that are appropriate to the methods employed by bank robbers.

Foreword | Digital technologies are often considered effective methods of deterring or preventing crime. New forms of surveillance have particular appeal when attempting to reduce violence in the night-time economy, given ongoing concerns over perceived increases in the frequency and severity of reported assaults. This study examines the rationales for adopting compulsory patron ID scanning as a key method of reducing violence in and around licensed venues in the Victorian regional city of Geelong.

Bikelinc today received a silver award in the community-led category of the 2021 Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards (ACVPA).

The ACVPA recognise best practice in the prevention or reduction of violence and other types of crime in Australia and play a vital role in highlighting effective community-based initiatives to prevent crime and violence.

Gangs exist within and outside schools, though not all delinquent behaviour is gang activity and not all gang activity involves crime or deviance. An earlier Trends and Issues paper (no. 237) stated that an important part of gang research is to explore ways of stopping criminal gangs from forming and/or growing. A working definition of a criminal gang for the present discussion is one in which a group sees itself as a "gang", and is perceived by others around it as a "gang", primarily because of its illegal activities.