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Foreword | Gambling has always been a popular form of entertainment in Australia, but the advent of poker and gaming machines, casinos, TABs and lotto-style games has contributed to a substantial growth in the gambling industry. The Productivity Commission (1999) reports that 82 per cent of the Australian adult population engaged in some form of gambling in 1997-98, with gambling taxes and levies paid to state and territory governments nearly doubling over the past 10 years.

Foreword | In recent years there has been increasing concern about the prevalence of drug driving in Australia. Over the past four years, the majority of Australian states have introduced legislation that makes it an offence to drive with the presence of a range of drugs in the blood or saliva. Using data from the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program, this paper examines the prevalence of drug driving among a sample of police detainees in key sites in 2005 and 2006.

Foreword | The criminal justice system is a complex process involving police, courts and corrections. Historically these component parts have tended to act autonomously yet their actions impact on each other. Increasingly criminal justice policy-makers have come to recognise the need to understand the long term impacts of policy changes across the whole system. To effectively and efficiently manage the criminal justice system, policy-makers require analytical tools to project the relative effects of changes to policies based on current system information.

Proceedings of a conference held 24-26 September 1991

Contents

• Opening Address
  Margaret Reynolds

Part 1: Women and the laws in Australia

• Introduction to part 1: Women and the laws in Australia
  Dr Patricia Easteal

The laws

• The incredible woman: a recurring character in criminal law
  Dr Jocelynne Scutt
• Invisible lives: women, dependence and the law
  Dr Suzanne Hatty
• Battered women who kill: a plea of self-defence
  Dr Patricia Easteal
• Rape prosecutions in Victoria

Foreword | This paper presents the key findings of the 'Youth Justice: Criminal Trajectories Research Project', a project that focused on recidivism among young offenders. It makes a significant contribution to the evidence base as it provides the offending trajectories of 1,503 young offenders over a seven year period.

Foreword | Modern corrections practice requires an assessment of the risk of reoffending on at least two levels. First, risk assessments are necessary to decide which offenders should be targeted for rehabilitation. Second, risk assessment is necessary to deal with the increasing demand by the public and politicians that offenders who are at a high risk of reoffending, especially violent and sexual offending, should not be released prematurely. This paper reports on a risk assessment tool that has been developed specifically for Indigenous offenders.

Foreword | Concern regarding the diversion and non-medical use of prescription pharmaceuticals continues to grow as anecdotal evidence and other research points to a sizeable increase in the illegal market for such drugs. Estimating the prevalence of illegal use and understanding how pharmaceutical drugs come to be traded in the illegal drug market remain key research priorities for policymakers and practitioners in both the public health and law enforcement sectors.

Contents

• Summary
  • What did we do?
  • What did we find?
• Introduction
  • What was the purpose of this study?
  • How did we do it?
  • What's not included in these estimates?
• Results
  • How many crimes are committed by organised crime offenders?
  • What do offences committed by organised crime offenders cost the community?
  • How much time do organised crime offenders spend in prison?
  • What does it cost to imprison organised crime offenders?

In the 1990s, the number of known victims of armed robberies in Australia increased from around 5,000 per year to a peak of over 11,000 in 2001 (Figure 1). Between 2001 and 2005 the number dropped steadily to around 6,000 (ABS 2006). The number of banks robbed and the number of victims of armed robberies involving firearms have generally mirrored this pattern. It is unlikely that these statistics represent the full extent of armed robbery in this country, as these data reflect only offences reported to and recorded by police.

Indigenous people (Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians) are disproportionately victims and offenders in homicide incidents both in relation to their relative proportion of the Australian population and in comparison with their non-Indigenous counterparts. In 2011–12, Indigenous people comprised three percent of the Australian population (ABS 2009; ABS 2012) yet constituted 13 percent of homicide victims (n=35) and 11 percent of homicide offenders (n=32; Bryant & Cussen 2015).

Australia's criminal justice system has been witness to significant transformation, primarily in response to a number of important factors including:

Foreword | Responding to juvenile offending is a unique policy and practice challenge. While a substantial proportion of crime is perpetuated by juveniles, most juveniles will ‘grow out’ of offending and adopt law-abiding lifestyles as they mature. This paper outlines the factors (biological, psychological and social) that make juvenile offenders different from adult offenders and that necessitate unique responses to juvenile crime.