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Foreword | Many Indigenous communities are concerned about substance abuse and community safety. This report confirms what we already know: Indigenous men have higher levels of contact with the criminal justice system, at an earlier age. However, Indigenous patterns of drug use and dependency contribute to the commission of crime in a quite distinct fashion. Indigenous offenders report higher levels of use and dependency on alcohol and cannabis than their non-Indigenous peers.

Foreword | Official crime statistics suggest that young people aged 24 years and under make the greatest contribution to a population’s overall crime levels. A decline in the proportion of the population aged 24 years or under should therefore reduce the population’s crime levels. Yet the impact of structural ageing—the shift in population age structure from ‘young’ to ‘old’—in Australia is ‘one frequently overlooked influence on long-term crime trends’ (Weatherburn 2001: 2).

Foreword | Between 1984 and 2004 the proportion of remanded prisoners rose from 12 to 20 percent of the total prisoner population, and the rate of prisoners remanded into custody tripled. In an attempt to identify the factors associated with high and low remand rates the researchers undertook a detailed study of Victoria (which has comparatively low remand rates) and South Australia (which has comparatively high remand rates).

Released prisoners are generally assumed to have poorer health, as reflected in a higher morbidity rate, than members of the general population. A recent Criminology Research Council report, Mortality and morbidity in prisoners after release from prison in Western Australia 1995-2003 is the first comprehensive study to demonstrate the degree to which this holds true. After adjustment for age, released prisoners had substantially higher hospital admission rates or contacts with mental health services than the general population.

Contents

• Acknowledgement of Country
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Abstract
• Executive summary
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion
• References
• Appendix

Released prisoners are generally assumed to have poorer health and a higher mortality rate than members of the general population. A recent Criminology Research Council report Mortality and morbidity in prisoners after release from prison in Western Australia 1995-2003 is the first comprehensive study to empirically demonstrate the extent to which this holds true for the whole population. The study tracked 13,667 persons released from prisons in the six years 1995-2001 inclusive, for a minimum of two years.

Proceedings of a seminar held 29-30 September 1987

Contents

• Overview
  
  Julia Vernon
• Welcome
  
  David Biles

Controlling prison crowding - the Victorian approach

• The political imperative
  
  Jim Kennan
• Sentencers' reactions
  
  Murray Gerkens
• Practical aspects of Victoria's approach
  
  Bill Kidston

Commentaries on Victoria's approach

• Whose gaols? Whose goals?
  
  Alec Lobban
• A police perspective on prison populations
  
  

The ageing of the population is as much a concern within the justice system as in general society. In 2006, Australia's prison population had a median age of 33, (ABS 2006). While younger than the national median (37 years), the prison population contains a large proportion of older prisoners (50 years and older; Grant 1999). The figure below shows the imprisonment rate (sentenced and remand) for older age groups from 1985 to 2006. Although imprisonment rates overall may be stablising (Crime facts info no. 147), they continue to increase for older groups.

Proceedings of a conference held 27-29 March 1990

Contents

• Opening address: Politics and prisons
  Peter Patmore
• Declining Northern Territory prison population - how this was brought about by effective community based programs
  Doug Owston
• Maximising diversion within the corrections continuum
  Denbigh Richards
• Evaluating imprisonment and parole: survival rates or failure rates?
  Rod Broadhurst
• Keeping people out of prison - which jurisdictions do it best?
  John Walker

A smaller total increase in the prison population and stability in the imprisonment rate over the 12 months to June 2006 indicate a slowing of the adult imprisonment rate in Australia. The Australian Institute of Criminology's Australian crime: facts and figures uses Australian Bureau of Statistics data to show the rate of adult imprisonment in Australia by sentenced and remanded prisoners. The overall imprisonment rate at 30 June 2006 was 163 prisoners per 100,000 adult population.