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Foreword | Public policy initiatives to redress parental child sexual offenders have been hindered by the absence of an offending profile that characterises this core group of intrafamilial offenders. Drawing on data from a sample of 213 offenders, this study augments knowledge about sex offender typologies by identifying ten key descriptive features of parental offenders.

Based on similarities in traits, behaviours and attributes, the FBI (Douglas et al. 1992) and National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (Sapp et al. n.d.) have developed offender profiles for specific arson motives. No single offender is likely to display all of these characteristics, but it is likely that many of the attributes, traits and behaviours listed below will be present within bushfire arsonists lighting fires on the basis of these motives.

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 | As part of a global effort to fight mass-marketed consumer scams, each year consumer protection agencies in 33 western countries participate in a month of fraud prevention activities to raise awareness of the problem and to provide advice to consumers on how to avoid being victimised. In Australia and New Zealand, 19 government agencies comprise the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce (ACFT), which conducted a campaign in March 2007 with the theme 'Scams target you - protect yourself'.

Foreword | This paper examines the current evidence of the cost, extent of and awareness of consumer fraud in Australia. In 2008, the ABS found that approximately five percent of the Australian population reported being victimised by consumer scams, with personal losses reaching almost $1b. This paper compares the findings of the ABS survey with those gathered by the AIC during the annual fraud awareness-raising activities conducted by the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce.

Foreword | Sexual offending against children is a highly emotive issue. It is nonetheless important that public policy initiatives to prevent and/or respond to child sexual abuse are based on the available evidence about child sex offenders.

Foreword | There has recently been renewed interest in place-based approaches for targeting crime prevention, such as justice reinvestment. This project linked research from life course and place-based criminology to explore whether some communities generated chronic and costly offenders. The Semi-Parametric Group-based Method was used to identify non-normative or chronic offenders in the 1990 Queensland Longitudinal Dataset (n=14,171).

More than 40 per cent of all Australian cybercrime victims fall prey to multiple types of cybercrime in a single year, with fraud and scam victims emerging as the most vulnerable. And it’s prompted a critical reminder for Australians to bolster their online safeguards.

Foreword | There is a lack of international and Australian research about offenders who have been convicted of human trafficking, slavery and slave-like practices. In Australia, 15 offenders have been convicted of such crimes. The publicly available court judgments about these offenders contain invaluable information about the characteristics and motivations of offenders, the intersection of trafficking offending with other forms of criminality and the common methods offenders use to control and exploit their victims.

Foreword | With the ageing of the population, and increasing demand for individuals to be financially literate and self-sufficient, older Australians may find themselves at greater risk of fraud. Although the proportion of the elderly experiencing fraud is lower than for those aged less than 65 years, this is the crime they are most likely to experience and the effects can be devastating as the elderly are often not able to recoup the losses.

The Turning Corners program today received a bronze award in the community-led category of the 2021 Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards (ACVPA).

The ACVPA 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.

Contents

• The television program standards
• Community attitudes to violence on television
• What needs to be done
• Conclusion
• References

Foreword | Sometimes criminal justice authorities may wish to control or to monitor the location of an individual without resorting to imprisonment. For example, before a criminal trial, police may want to ensure that the defendant stays in town or stays away from the complainant. After conviction, a judge may wish to place limits on an offender's freedom while not employing a full-time custodial sanction. Upon release from prison, a parole board may want to impose restrictions on an offender.