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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 use of fire in homicide can involve a fire as a direct weapon to commit homicide, or to conceal homicide. It can involve the additional crime of arson, the act of deliberately setting fire to property. Analysis shows that, while homicide trends over this period have declined, the proportion of fire-associated homicides has increased significantly; a trend which has also been observed overseas. This paper examines the involvement of fire, either directly or indirectly, in the commission of homicide in Australia.

Personal security in public places has become an area of increasing concern to governments in the past 10 years in Australia and overseas. One response has been a significant increase in the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) in densely populated areas such as central business districts and entertainment districts. CCTV is employed as a surveillance measure in such areas to monitor behaviour of individuals and in public spaces as a deterrent and opportunity reduction measure (see AIC 2006).

The AIC has recently undertaken research investigating the use of fire in homicides in Australia. The National Homicide Monitoring Program database, containing data on all homicides known to police in Australia between 1989-90 and 2004-05, was used to identify the 100 homicide incidents where fire was responsible for the death, or the death was recorded as occurring in association with the arson.

The use of geographic information systems (GIS) has emerged as one of the most important developments in crime analysis and investigation in recent years. By combining geographic principles and geocoded (spatial) location data with crime data and criminological theories, GIS allow the analysis of crime incidents across time and space. Crime maps developed using GIS have typically been used for hot spot mapping at a local or jurisdiction level, such as to determine policing priorities and allocate crime prevention resources (Weir & Bangs 2007).

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) releases a first-time report on cybercrime in Australia.

Foreword | Although the number of identified cases of trafficking into Australia is relatively low, the hidden nature of this crime and reluctance of trafficked persons to report to authorities suggests that a number of cases may go unidentified and the problem may be more extensive than available data indicates. Much can be learned about the risks of exploitation, including trafficking, from an overview of undocumented movement throughout the region.

There has been little information in the public domain to date about sentences handed down for arson. The Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council recently released data on 276 adults sentenced for the crime of arson between 2001-02 and 2005-06 in the County and Supreme Courts, showing that more than 99 percent of such cases were heard in these courts. While there is no indication whether the arsons involved bushfires, the data do provide information on the number of convicted arsonists who received a custodial sentence.

Sentencing outcomes, adults, Victoria [see attached PDF]

Foreword | Online communities are increasingly being recognised as a way of sharing ideas and knowledge among different practitioner communities, particularly when practitioners are not able to meet face to face. This paper explores the considerations associated with establishing online communities for crime prevention practitioners, drawing on research from across the community of practice, online community and knowledge management sectors.

Foreword | The volume of digital forensic evidence is rapidly increasing, leading to large backlogs. In this paper, a Digital Forensic Data Reduction and Data Mining Framework is proposed. Initial research with sample data from South Australia Police Electronic Crime Section and Digital Corpora Forensic Images using the proposed framework resulted in significant reduction in the storage requirements—the reduced subset is only 0.196 percent and 0.75 percent respectively of the original data volume.

Foreword | The disadvantages faced by Indigenous Australians are well-documented and are the focus of determined efforts by government and non-government agencies throughout Australia. Indigenous justice and safety are priority issues for the Council of Australian Governments and law enforcement. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has contributed to work on closing the gap of Indigenous disadvantage by increasing knowledge about justice and community safety issues affecting Indigenous people.

The ultimate goal of crime prevention is to develop a highly reliable method for forecasting future crime trends and problems. If we can predict crime, we can develop prevention and reduction measures. But like reliably forecasting the weather, there are many errors in our methods and gaps in our skills. It is therefore not surprising that important developments can be very influential.

The South Australian Home Detention Program today received a bronze award in the community-led category of the 2023 Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards (ACVPAs).

The ACVPAs 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 before it occurs.

Measures to reduce residential burglary are always a major feature of crime prevention programs across the world. One of the most important of these programs was the Reducing burglary initiative (RBI), which was part of Britain's innovative Crime reduction programme (CRP). The RBI was designed to reduce the incidence of burglary nationally in England and Wales through targeting local action to those areas with the highest burglary rates.