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Foreword | Correctional rehabilitation programs are routinely offered to moderate to high-risk offenders in all Australian jurisdictions. The similarities in service provision between states and territories is great; most, if not all, offer programs that are dedicated towards reducing risk in sexual and violent offenders, as well as addressing more general causes of offending. This paper describes some of the changes that have occurred to service provision since the last national review of offenders programs was conducted in 2004.

The following new titles have been added to the growing collection of arson-related literature that can be found in the searchable bibliographic database. In addition to these titles, the database provides access to major bushfire arson news articles. Of the 10 titles listed, the last three are Australian.

We’re pleased to announce keynote speaker Professor Ethel Quayle will be presenting at the AIC 2025 Conference, which will take place in Canberra on 11-12 March 2025. Professor Quayle will be speaking on Technology-facilitated sexual crimes against children: offenders, victims and environment.

Local government is increasingly seen to be a key player in the development and implementation of community level crime prevention programs. Across Australia, virtually all government crime prevention agencies include local government in the development and delivery of their respective crime prevention strategies.

Early intervention aims to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors that impact on the likelihood that a young person will engage in offending behaviour. As a crime prevention strategy, it is based on the premise that intervening early in a young person's development can produce significant long term personal, social and economic benefits.

Foreword | Investigations into the widespread possession of online child sexual abuse images reveal enormous variety in the types of images collected by adults with a sexual interest in children. While there is almost universal condemnation of the sexual exploitation of children through such images, it is not possible to define precisely what constitutes an illegal child sexual abuse image. This is because the concept is broad, changeable and, at the margins, elusive.

Most studies investigating motives for arson have noted the phenomenon of fires being lit by the very people entrusted by the community with fighting them. The incidence of malicious firesetting by firefighters is invariably portrayed in the literature as quite rare, although direct research is limited. The NSW police service's Strikeforce Tronto investigated some 1,500 suspicious fires from 2001 to 2004. It resulted in 50 people being charged, 11 of them volunteer firefighters.

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.

Foreword | The use of private security in crime prevention and law enforcement activities has grown to a point where security personnel outnumber police by more than two-to-one. This paper examines the size and scope of the security industry both locally and internationally. Using ABS census data, it provides a detailed and up-to-date picture of the security industry and makes key comparisons with police. Findings show that in Australia in 2006, there were 52,768 personnel employed full-time in the security industry, compared with 44,898 police.

This is the first of a two part series on spectator violence at sporting events. Part one covers spectator violence at professional sporting events. The second will focus on issues of violence at amateur sporting events, particularly parents as spectators and the behaviours they exhibit. Spectator violence refers to any violent activity that occurs among those attending a sporting event. It can be directed at players, officials or fellow spectators.

Foreword | Over the last few decades, understandings of the nature and causes of domestic violence have increased in sophistication. This has been influenced by, and led to, an influx of domestic violence typologies that have attempted to identify differences between groups of offenders and victims based on factors ranging from physiological reactions to specific stimuli through to historical experiences of violence and abuse.

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.

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.

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) today released a report in collaboration with the eSafety Commissioner that examined the prevalence and nature of sexual extortion among a sample of Australian adolescents aged 16 to 18 years.