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In light of the significant strain that alcohol intoxication places on law enforcement agencies in Australia, attention has been focused on the role of police in reducing the burden of alcohol-related problems. There is a growing interest in the capacity of police to prevent, and not just respond to, alcohol-related problems, and a significant body of evidence that identifies best practice in policing licensed premises. Doherty and Roche (2003) offer the following five point plan:

Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) is a method for improving police effectiveness through examining and acting on the underlying conditions that give rise to community problems. Responses emphasise prevention, go beyond the criminal justice system alone, and engage with other public agencies, the community and the private sector, where practical.

Proceedings of a seminar held 2-3 August 1984

Contents

Plenary session : Thursday 2 August

• Opening remarks
  
  Professor Richard W. Harding
• Opening address
  
  The Honourable Peter T. Anderson
• Community policing in Japan and Singapore
  
  Professor David H. Bayley
• Community policing in New Zealand
  
  Superintendent James Morgan
• Police community involvement: a planned approach to effective crime prevention
  
  Inspector David J. Smith

Plenary session : Friday 3 August

Foreword | 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 police watchhouses, and the timely output of this data to police, policy-makers, criminal justice practitioners and other professionals every three months.

Police responses to domestic violence have been examined by a number of ombudsmans' offices across Australia, (WA Ombudsman 2003, Qld Crime and Misconduct Commission 2005, NSW Ombudsman 2006), with many findings consistent across the reports. The NSW report found that areas where domestic violence was rife were also those least equipped to deal with it. Police felt that policing domestic violence was a complex and frustrating task due to its violent nature and the cumbersome court processes associated with applying for an ADVO.

The prevalence of cannabis and volatile substance misuse in rural and remote communities in Australia has become a growing concern in recent years (Gray et al. 2006; Delahunty & Putt 2006a). However, evidence suggests that mainstream drug policing strategies in these settings are generally not practical. A good practice framework has been developed to assist police in their responses to illicit drug use amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in rural and remote areas of Australia (Delahunty & Putt 2006b).

Key findings

• The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM II) program operates in 10 cities across the United States and captures drug use information from police detainees using urinalysis procedures comparable to Australia’s own Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program.

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.

The glossary provides definitions of data items presented on the Deaths in custody in Australia real-time dashboard and quarterly dashboard. Custody type, Indigenous status and sex are presented on both dashboards.

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).

Key findings

• In light of increased concern regarding the illegal use of prescription medication and the extent of the diversion of pharmaceuticals into the black market, the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) incorporated a set of new questions into its Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program in 2011.
• Analysis showed that one in three (36%) of 825 adult police detainees self-reported using either buprenorphine, methadone, morphine, benzodiazepines or dexamphetamine at least once in the past 12 months.

Foreword | This study builds on a previous project that examined the link between child maltreatment and juvenile offending. It followed all children born in 1983 in Queensland through any contact they had with the child protection system, and/or any juvenile justice matter that required the child to appear in court or be held in custody. The current study involved the addition of the 1984 birth cohort and formal police cautioning histories to the dataset. This report describes the key findings in relation to cautioning.