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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.

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.

Victoria Police’s Vehicle Crime Squad (VCS) Second-Hand Dealer Inspection and Closure program today received a bronze award in the police-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.

Foreword | The internet is an affordable and effective place for small businesses to sell and promote their goods and services. However, the internet also provides opportunities for fraudulent behaviour and unauthorised access to business and client data. Attacks on the computer system of a business can have immediate and ongoing effects, such as targeting customers for identity crimes or infecting website visitors with malicious software.

Alcohol-related violence

There is strong evidence of an association between the consumption of alcohol and violence (Graham & Homel 2008). Conservative estimates suggest that in 2004–05, the total costs attributable to alcohol-related crime in Australia was $1.7b; the social cost relating to alcohol-related violence (which excludes costs to the criminal justice system) was $187m; and the costs associated with the loss of life due to alcohol-related violent crime amounted to $124m (Collins & Lapsley 2007).

New reports by researchers from Griffith University demonstrate the benefits of a communication program to improve children’s language skills, when combined with family support.

Foreword | This paper examines the current evidence of the cost, extent of and awareness of consumer fraud in Australia. In 2008, the ABS found that approximately five percent of the Australian population reported being victimised by consumer scams, with personal losses reaching almost $1b. This paper compares the findings of the ABS survey with those gathered by the AIC during the annual fraud awareness-raising activities conducted by the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce.

Foreword | A range of alternative justice models have been introduced to address the perceived weaknesses of traditional criminal justice processes. While the success of these alternative models is usually assessed in terms of outcomes such as reoffending, they often face scrutiny over the additional costs incurred by government. This paper is one of two AIC publications focused on the Neighbourhood Justice Centre (NJC) in the City of Yarra in Melbourne. It compares the operating costs of the NJC with more traditional court and service delivery models.

Foreword | The criminal justice system is a complex process involving police, courts and corrections. Historically these component parts have tended to act autonomously yet their actions impact on each other. Increasingly criminal justice policy-makers have come to recognise the need to understand the long term impacts of policy changes across the whole system. To effectively and efficiently manage the criminal justice system, policy-makers require analytical tools to project the relative effects of changes to policies based on current system information.

Foreword | This paper examines the evidence that would enable judgement of what is likely to happen to the incidence of fraud in the context of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), whether as a result of the crisis or of other factors that coincide with it. Normally, statistical data on crime and/or cost of crime trends is examined to enable determination of whether a problem is getting better or worse.

Foreword | In their Trends and Issues paper, "Red Flags of Fraud", Grabosky and Duffield (2001) identified a number of warning signals for fraud, or anomalies. While the existence of anomalies is not always indicative of criminality, they do signify heightened risks that should be investigated further.