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Australia's criminal justice system has been witness to significant transformation, primarily in response to a number of important factors including:

As Indigenous Australians constitute a small minority of the total Australian population, only very large scale or specially designed surveys will elicit large enough samples to produce robust estimates of the prevalence of illicit drug use. As a result there are only general indicators suggesting that Indigenous Australians use illicit drugs at a higher rate than the general population. The most recent national household drug use survey showed that 27 percent of Indigenous people had used illicit drugs in the previous 12 months, almost double the rate for rest of the population (15%).

Foreword | Using data from the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program, this paper explores involvement in intimate partner violence, and provides first-time results from face-to-face interviews with a group of 1,597 police detainees. The study found that the levels of intimate partner violence are much higher among this group (49%) than is found from general population surveys. More than two-thirds of the detainees who were involved in partner violence reported being both a victim and a perpetrator in the past 12 months.

Foreword | Once a trafficked person has exited an exploitative situation, they may require support to return and reintegrate into their chosen community. Using data contained in the International Organization for Migration Counter Trafficking Module, the recovery, return and reintegration experiences of Indonesian victims of human trafficking are examined in this paper. Understanding these experiences has important benefits in developing a better understanding of what assists returnees to recover and may decrease the likelihood of re-trafficking.

Contents

• What is child abuse?
• How widespread is the problem of child abuse?
• What are the effects of child abuse?
• What causes child abuse and who are the abusers?
• What has been done?
• What needs to be done in the future?
• How can this be achieved?
• Conclusion

A shocking new study released today by the Australian Institute of Criminology, unpacks the risks and experiences of underage adult-based platform use.

Most studies investigating motives for arson have noted the phenomenon of fires being lit by the very people entrusted by the community with fighting them. The incidence of malicious firesetting by firefighters is invariably portrayed in the literature as quite rare, although direct research is limited. The NSW police service's Strikeforce Tronto investigated some 1,500 suspicious fires from 2001 to 2004. It resulted in 50 people being charged, 11 of them volunteer firefighters.

Criminal hacking

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.

Foreword | The use of cocaine in Australia, among both the general population and 'high-risk' groups, has traditionally been low. However, several indicators suggest that use of this drug has increased, especially among 'high-risk' groups during the recent heroin shortage. There have also been increases in the number of arrests related to cocaine over the past few years, which is a cause for concern.

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.

In Australia, random breath testing (RBT) was introduced in the mid-1970s to detect drivers under the influence of alcohol (Baldock & Woolley 2013). This resulted in a reduction in fatal crashes and alcohol-related traffic accidents across Australia (Drummond, Sullivan & Cavallo 1992; Henstridge, Homel & Mackay 1997; Watson & Freeman 2007). The success of RBT can be explained through the classic deterrence doctrine, which suggests that decision-making is influenced by the perception of whether the benefits of the crime outweigh the risks of being caught (Homel 1988).

Foreword | Project STOP, an online database in which pharmacists record sales of pseudoephedrine (PSE)-based medication, was implemented in 2005 to aid in reducing the diversion of PSE-based products for use as precursors in the domestic manufacture of methamphetamine. Australian evaluations of regulations governing the sale of PSE-based medications and the impact of Project STOP have so far been limited. This research explores the impact of the mandatory recording of PSE-based medication sales on PSE diversion and clan lab detection in Queensland.