Search

Foreword | This paper considers the potential application of social marketing principles to crime prevention. Social marketing has been a significant force in the public health field in Australia for more than two decades. It is a key component in the promotion of engagement in health protection behaviours, early detection programs and the promotion of individual health behaviour change. It is built on the application of evidence-based strategies and often, dual consumer/provider communication strategies.

Foreword | Bullying in schools has become an issue of major importance among educators. However, interventions to reduce bullying have enjoyed only modest and limited success. This paper examines five different explanations for bullying. These emphasise, respectively:

Foreword | It is well-documented that crime rates and the prevalence of mental illness are both higher in areas with pronounced levels of social disorganisation. Far less is known about the association of disadvantaged community conditions with criminal behaviour and mental illness.

Foreword | This paper reports the experience of Queensland police in the investigation of predatory behaviour by men seeking sex with children through online chat rooms. It reports on the 25 investigations into online grooming completed by the Queensland Police in the period June 2003 and September 2004 under the code name Task Force Argos, and includes a discussion of three successful prosecutions.

Reducing the rate of self-inflicted deaths in prison has long been a priority for correctional agencies across Australia and internationally. The rate of self-inflicted deaths in the prison population greatly exceeds that of self-inflicted deaths in the community; prisoners represent a particularly vulnerable and high-risk group for suicide. This paper updates Dalton’s (1999) national overview of self-inflicted deaths, which analysed data from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s (AIC) National Deaths in Custody Program (NDICP) for the period 1980–1998.

Foreword | Indigenous over-representation in the justice system is a challenge facing Australian society. Recently, it has been suggested that increased use of diversionary processes could reduce Indigenous over-representation. Reported in this paper are the findings of a project examining the 1990 offender cohorts’ contact with the Queensland juvenile justice system.

Foreword | There is a lack of international and Australian research about offenders who have been convicted of human trafficking, slavery and slave-like practices. In Australia, 15 offenders have been convicted of such crimes. The publicly available court judgments about these offenders contain invaluable information about the characteristics and motivations of offenders, the intersection of trafficking offending with other forms of criminality and the common methods offenders use to control and exploit their victims.

Foreword | Approximately one in four women in most Western nations are at risk of becoming a victim of intimate partner violence (IPV). Interventions for IPV victims have shown to be significant in preventing negative outcomes. Using data from the International Violence Against Women Survey, this paper examines predictors of help-seeking by IPV victims and considers whether such responses are influenced by the severity of abuse experienced.

Foreword | For more than a decade, Australia has witnessed a sustained reduction in property crime. Yet relatively little is known about what may have caused this decline.

Foreword | This paper is the second in a series that examines the different components of the criminal justice response to trafficking in persons. Specifically, this paper seeks to identify some of the practical issues that may affect trafficking prosecutions, such as unclear legal frameworks, the transnational nature of trafficking, and reliance on often traumatised victims as witnesses who may also be unwilling or unable to participate in prosecutions.

Foreword | Fraud is Australia’s most costly form of crime with the Australian Institute of Criminology estimating that in excess of $8.5b was lost to fraud in 2005 (Rollings 2008). Consumer fraud alone has been found to cost Australians almost $1b each year (ABS 2008c). Most types of consumer fraud entail the use of so-called ‘advance fee’ techniques in which individuals are tricked into paying money—an ‘advance fee’—upfront in order to secure an anticipated financial or other benefit at a later date.

Foreword | We know that for some crimes, like human trafficking, it is difficult to secure prosecutions. It is also the case that these kind of crimes are difficult to detect. Human trafficking presents different challenges from domestic crimes, like sexual assault, because of its often transnational nature and the potential involvement of a network of facilitators in a number of countries.

Foreword | The Australian Institute of Criminology previously estimated the cost of fraud in Australia in 2005 to be approximately $8.5b (Rollings 2008). Fraud risks affect all sectors of society extending from those who provide government services, to those who receive benefits, as well as private sector businesses such as primary producers, and those who buy and sell goods and services online. In this paper, the specific risks of financial crime that arise in and subsequently affect those in remote and regional communities in Australia are explored.

Foreword | There is now a strong evidence base that problem behaviour by young children is one of the strongest predictors of both adolescent delinquency and later adult offending. The Pathways to Prevention project began in 2001 with the aim of involving family, school and community in a broad set of planned interventions to prevent anti-social behaviour among this group.

Foreword |This paper presents an initial analysis of tapes containing confidential and non identifying interviews with ten active and retired Australian police commissioners. The interviews were initiated by the Australian Institute of Criminology in 1999 and were conducted by former Tasmanian police commissioner John Johnston.