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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.

Foreword | The number of prisoners in Australian prisons has been increasing over the past decade. In Western Australia the number of female offenders has increased by 40 percent over the past five years. One contributing factor to this increase may be the re incarceration of parolees who have violated parole.

This research used the publicly available decision documents from the Prisoners Review Board in Western Australia to investigate the background details of offences, and the details of the parole violations of 41 women released in 2013–14.

Foreword | Drug and alcohol use have been found to be important correlates of criminal offending. The Drug Use Careers of Offenders (DUCO) studies found high levels of drug and alcohol dependency among women, men and juveniles incarcerated in Australian prisons. Offenders also reported a range of negative life experiences related to their drug and alcohol abuse.

The number of women incarcerated in Australian prisons has almost doubled since 1991 from 607 to 1,124. An Australian Institute of Criminology paper "Women Prisoners and Correctional Programs" (details below), discusses some of the major trends in the incarceration of women including the disproportionate rate of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander women currently imprisoned. While the rate of incarceration for men per 100,000 has increased from 194 to 240.5 since 1991 (an increase of 24 per cent), the rate for women has increased from 9.2 to 15.3 (an increase of 66 per cent).

Contents

• List of tables
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Part I - The key features of a corrections forecasting model
  • Introduction
  • Forecasting the future age/sex distribution of the population
  • The number of persons proceeded against
  • The disposition of convicted persons
  • The determination of time actually served in prison
  • Security classifications of prisoners
  • What to do about remandees
  • The treatment of non-custodial corrections

The publication Corrective Services Australia from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, presents information on persons in custody and community based corrections. In the June quarter 2003, the average daily number of prisoners in Australia was 22,507, an increase of 322 (1 per cent) on the March quarter 2003. This is the highest level on a quarterly basis since the collection commenced in March quarter 1998. Furthermore, the average daily number of prisoners has increased by 1020 (5 per cent) since the June quarter 2001.

Note: Revised edition.

Foreword | Although mental illness is widely recognised as a problem in modern society, it presents particular challenges for the criminal justice system. Research has shown that offenders have higher rates of mental illness than the general community. The Criminology Research Council commissioned a study to assess the level of screening and the instruments used across the jurisdictions by criminal justice agencies.

New research from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s Indigenous Justice Research Program examined the validity of the Violence Risk Scale (VRS) to assess and predict risk of future offending among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous male prisoners.

This paper presents a brief overview of the key diversion programs for Indigenous women currently in operation in Australia, with reference to relevant developments in New Zealand and Canada. It was prepared against the background of recent research on Indigenous women's offending patterns and their over-representation in the criminal justice system (see Bartels 2010), which included the following key findings:

Foreword | Many criminal justice practitioners have observed that offenders experience poor mental health. While international studies have found mental health to be poorer among prisoners than in the general population, less information is available either about offenders who are not imprisoned or alleged offenders detained by police. The mental health of offenders is of key policy interest from both health service and crime prevention perspectives.

Data were drawn from the Queensland Corrective Services Integrated Offender Management System.

The findings will be useful to policymakers and practitioners working in corrections and related fields.