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Foreword | This paper examines the illegal drug using and criminal careers of participants in the Drug Use Careers of Offenders (DUCO) project. The project surveyed 2,135 adult male offenders who were incarcerated in prisons in Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory in mid-2001.

As Indigenous Australians constitute a small minority of the total Australian population, only very large scale or specially designed surveys will elicit large enough samples to produce robust estimates of the prevalence of illicit drug use. As a result there are only general indicators suggesting that Indigenous Australians use illicit drugs at a higher rate than the general population. The most recent national household drug use survey showed that 27 percent of Indigenous people had used illicit drugs in the previous 12 months, almost double the rate for rest of the population (15%).

Foreword | The use of cocaine in Australia, among both the general population and 'high-risk' groups, has traditionally been low. However, several indicators suggest that use of this drug has increased, especially among 'high-risk' groups during the recent heroin shortage. There have also been increases in the number of arrests related to cocaine over the past few years, which is a cause for concern.

Between 2000 and 2008, the imprisonment rate for Indigenous Australians increased by 34.5 percent (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008). In 2000, the imprisonment rate was 1,653 prisoners per 100,000 Indigenous adult population, which increased to 2,223 prisoners per 100,000 Indigenous adult population in 2008. The increase in imprisonment rates for Indigenous people was almost seven times that of non-Indigenous people in the same period.

Community corrections comprise of a variety of non-custodial programs. They vary in the extent and nature of supervision, the conditions of the order, and the restrictions on a person's freedom of movement in the community. They generally provide either a non-custodial sentencing alternative or a post-custodial mechanism for reintegrating prisoners into the community under continued supervision. The rate of community corrections in Australia is more than twice as high as the rate of imprisonment, and has been declining in recent years.

Contents

• Introduction
• Welcome to Australia
• Agenda item 1: Trends and patterns in penal populations: size, composition, types and characteristics
• Agenda item 2: Inter-agency co-operation within the criminal justice system, namely between corrections and other agencies
• Agenda item 3: Safeguarding human rights within the penal system
• Agenda item 4: The media, its power and influence upon corrections systems
• Conference activities
• General business
• Closing address
• List of delegates

Foreword | Although there are numerous arguments for and against the use of suspended sentences, improving our knowledge of how this sentencing disposition is applied in practice will help inform the debate. This paper provides an overview of the use of suspended sentences in the Supreme Court of Tasmania, as well as an analysis of reconviction and breach rates for those placed on such an order.

Foreword | Using data from the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program, this paper explores involvement in intimate partner violence, and provides first-time results from face-to-face interviews with a group of 1,597 police detainees. The study found that the levels of intimate partner violence are much higher among this group (49%) than is found from general population surveys. More than two-thirds of the detainees who were involved in partner violence reported being both a victim and a perpetrator in the past 12 months.

Foreword | A juvenile pre-court diversion scheme was introduced in the Northern Territory in 2000. Administered by police, it uses warnings and conferences to divert selected juveniles from the court process. This paper reports on an analysis of Northern Territory police records on 3,597 apprehended juveniles over a 5 year period. Findings showed that the great majority of juveniles (76%) did not reoffend within the first year after their initial diversion or court appearance.

Foreword | Although more than 12,000 offenders are on parole at any given time, little is known about the effectiveness of parole supervision in reducing reoffending. The few studies that have been conducted involve samples of parolees released from prison in other countries. The present study is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of parole supervision in Australia.

This publication was the official journal of the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Vol. 1 No. 1 1989 - Vol. 7 No. 3 1996

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The term 'capital punishment' is derived from the Latin caput, meaning 'head'. It originally referred to death by decapitation, but now applies generally to state sanctioned executions. Some Middle East countries still practise decapitation for certain offences, but more common forms of the death penalty include electrocution, gas, firing squad, lethal injection and hanging.¹

Foreword | The latest national prison census revealed that on 30 June 2003, there were 23,555 prisoners in Australian jails (ABS 2004). Of these, seven per cent (1,594) were women, an increase of 109 per cent since 1993. Of the 812 prisoners whose most serious offence involved deception or a related offence, 21 per cent were female, representing 11 per cent of the total female prison population, compared to three per cent of men in jail for the same category of offence.