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Foreword | An examination of firearm related deaths in Australia between 1991 and 2001 found a 47 per cent decrease in numbers, with a fall in the number of suicides accounting for the largest part of that decrease. Nine out of 10 firearm related deaths involved males. Compared to firearm related suicides and accidents where less than 10 per cent involved the death of a female, a higher proportion of homicides involved a female victim (33%). Persons under the age of 15 years were least likely to die as a result of a firearm related injury.

Contents

• The nature of domestic violence
• The extent of the problem
• The costs of domestic violence
• Community attitudes
• The victims
• The perpetrators
• Legislating against domestic violence
• Policing domestic violence

Foreword | Restorative justice conferencing for young offenders is a legislated response to youth offending, which has been in place in all Australian states and territories for nearly two decades. Restorative justice conferences are meetings between young offenders, their victims and supporters to discuss the offence, its impact and what the young person can do to repair harms caused by the offending behaviour.

Foreword | The number of prisoners in Australian prisons has been increasing over the past decade. In Western Australia the number of female offenders has increased by 40 percent over the past five years. One contributing factor to this increase may be the re incarceration of parolees who have violated parole.

This research used the publicly available decision documents from the Prisoners Review Board in Western Australia to investigate the background details of offences, and the details of the parole violations of 41 women released in 2013–14.

Australia is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse nations in the world. Australians identify with over 100 different faiths or religious traditions (Bouma 2006) and over 300 languages are spoken in Australian households (AMF 2013). Although a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs are present within the Australian community, the nation has experienced a relatively peaceful recent history.

Foreword | Wadeye is one of the largest Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Over the past decade, the community has attracted much negative media attention because of the amount of violence that has occurred. This violence has often been portrayed as the result of gang activity.

This paper examines how gangs operate in the Wadeye community and provides some insight into the perceptions of gang members on their relationships with community authority structures and family support mechanisms.

Foreword | Corrections statistics in Australia indicate a clear trend towards increased numbers of older prisoners and the growth of this inmate group is paralleled in prisons in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand. Older prisoner populations present a number of challenges for governments, correctional administrators, healthcare providers and community agencies.

Foreword | The rapid development and adoption of online digital technologies has had a profound effect on the way young people conduct their social relationships. The emergence of sexting, or the distribution of sexually explicit photos and videos, has gained widespread attention and raised moral concerns. However, there remains little policy-relevant research on the prevalence of sexting and its impact on young people.

In 2003, the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) published a report that drew attention to the characteristics of domestic/family homicide based on the differing family relationships between victims and offenders (Mouzos & Rushforth 2003). Over the 13 years of data examined for that report (ie 1 July 1989 to 30 June 2002), there were, on average, 129 domestic/family homicide victims each year (between 32 and 47 percent of all homicides annually).

Foreword | One in three Australian women experience domestic violence at some point during their adult life and it is women and their children who typically suffer the most severe short and long-term consequences of this violence.

Foreword | Cloud computing can be defined as a pool of virtualised computing resources that allows users to gain access to applications and data in a web-based environment on demand. This paper explains the various cloud architecture and usage models that exist and some of the benefits in using cloud services. It seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the emerging threat landscape created by cloud computing, with a view to identifying avenues for risk reduction.

Foreword | Protecting and providing support to victims is a central component of the international and Australian response to combat trafficking in persons. The complex and diverse nature of people trafficking means that victims may experience a range of exploitative conditions across a variety of commercial and domestic settings.

Foreword | Indonesia has one of the highest rates of workers seeking employment abroad, with the majority of these workers being females employed in domestic service. Due to the nature of recruitment, the process of migration and the location and characteristics of the work, Indonesian migrant domestic workers may in some instances be at risk of abuse, exploitation and human trafficking.

Indigenous people (Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians) are disproportionately victims and offenders in homicide incidents both in relation to their relative proportion of the Australian population and in comparison with their non-Indigenous counterparts. In 2011–12, Indigenous people comprised three percent of the Australian population (ABS 2009; ABS 2012) yet constituted 13 percent of homicide victims (n=35) and 11 percent of homicide offenders (n=32; Bryant & Cussen 2015).

Foreword | The poor health of prisoners during imprisonment is well documented, but there have been few, if any studies into the longer term health prospects for prisoners after their release into the community. This research is the first to use linked administrative data to track the continuing health problems of and use of health services by prisoners in Western Australia before and after their imprisonment.