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In Australia and overseas there exists a paucity of research on deaths in custody where women are the primary focus of study; most of the literature in this area treats women as a subset of the primary focus - men. It has been suggested that this lack of information about women dying in custody is due to the relatively small number of female deaths when compared with the number of male deaths. Indeed, Scraton and Chadwick (1995, p. 89) comment that:

Foreword | Confidence in the criminal justice system has emerged as a critical issue at the interface of the administration of justice and political pressures in western democracies. For more than a decade, governments in the West have felt acute pressure to make the criminal justice system more relevant, more transparent and more accountable. The 'crisis of confidence', particularly in judges and sentencing, has led to a range of high profile policy announcements seeking to 'modernise' the criminal justice system.

According to the Productivity Commission's Report on government services 2006, there was a total of 45,201 full-time sworn police officers based in the various Australian jurisdictions in 2004-05. The chart below shows rates of sworn police per 100,000 persons in the six Australian states, and Australia as a whole, over the past five years. Excluded from the data are Australian Federal Police not involved in ACT policing.

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) manages the annual Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards (ACVPA) every year, with the Director of the AIC chairing the Selection Board. On 29 November 2018, 12 projects were recognised at an award ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra. The Senator the Hon Linda Reynolds CSC, Assistant Minister for Home Affairs, announced the winners.

Foreword | Indigenous over-representation in the justice system is a challenge facing Australian society. Recently, it has been suggested that increased use of diversionary processes could reduce Indigenous over-representation. Reported in this paper are the findings of a project examining the 1990 offender cohorts’ contact with the Queensland juvenile justice system.

Foreword | This paper summarises the results of a small-scale study into the online interactions of suspected paedophiles with undercover Australian police officers posing as male children. The study provides insight to an under-researched area of how persons with a sexual interest in male children interact with potential victims and whether these interactions differ from online engagements with female children.

Foreword | Violent crime statistics drawn from police data do not show the large amount of violent crime and victimisation that is never disclosed to police. Within this ‘dark figure of crime’ are human experiences that can leave victims without help and support, perpetrators not coming to justice and cycles of violence continuing unbroken. This paper explores some of the reasons for the high rates of non-disclosure of violence in Indigenous communities.

Acknowledgements

This handbook was commissioned by the New South Wales Department of Attorney General and Justice and prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of Joanne Baker and Emma Worthington from the New South Wales Department of Attorney General and Justice for their valuable input and feedback.

© Crown in right of the State of New South Wales (Department of Attorney General and Justice)

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the police associations in Australia and overseas who sent information on single person patrols. In addition, we appreciate the time and effort that staff of the SA Police Service, NSW Police, Western Australia Police, Northern Territory Police, Victoria Police, Tasmania Police and ACT Policing took to provide us with additional information on the topic. We would also like to acknowledge all the time and effort Janine Chandler (AIC JV Barry librarian) dedicated to helping us locate literature that was proving difficult to find.

The Australian Institute of Criminology releases annually the Composition of Australia's Police Services report which details the number of police service employees in Australia - both sworn and public service personnel - by rank and gender. In June 2002, there were 46,369 sworn police officers in Australia. This equates to a rate of 240.4 police officers per 100,000 population, an increase from 231.7 (3.6%) in 2001. The highest rate of police officers was in the Northern Territory with 468.8 per 100,000 population, a decrease from 498.5 (6.3%) in 2001.

Main report: The policing implications of cannabis, amphetamine and other illicit drug use in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities

The Australian Bureau of Statistics' publication Crime and Safety Australia presents findings from a household survey that collected data on the nature and extent of crime in the community. The publication includes information from individuals and households about their experience of selected crimes, as well as details regarding the most recent experience of crime such as whether it was reported to police.