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The National deaths in custody program (NDCIP) has been responsible for monitoring the extent and nature of deaths in police, prison and juvenile custody since 1980. The 2003 NDCIP annual report shows there were 68 deaths in custody in 2003, a decline from 85 in 2002. The number of deaths in police custody decreased from 33 in 2002 to 29 in 2003, and the number of deaths in prison custody also declined from 50 deaths in 2002 to 39 deaths in 2003.

The Drug use careers of female offenders study, recently released by the Australian Institute of Criminology, is the latest addition to the DUCO project which has previously examined over 2,000 male offenders. In the female study, 470 women incarcerated in prisons in six jurisdictions were interviewed. The project was funded by the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department under the National Illicit Drug Strategy. The study found that a majority (80%) of the female offenders reported having ever used any illegal drugs.

Illicit drug use has been identified as an important factor in criminal offending for both men and women. There is debate about whether drug use 'leads' to crime or the reverse. The Australian Institute of Criminology conducted the Drug use careers of offenders (DUCO) study in order to examine the interaction between criminal offending and drug use patterns. A total of 470 females and 2,135 males incarcerated in Australian prisons were interviewed.

According to Crown Prosecutors interviewed for a recent Australian Institute of Criminology study, a number of factors determine whether to proceed with or discontinue an adult sexual assault case. The most important of these is credibility, which encompasses various personal characteristics, including whether the victim is genuine and trustworthy, for example, not embellishing facts such as how much she or he had been drinking. Perceptions of credibility are also influenced by demeanour, such as a victim being calm and not argumentative towards the defence.

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has released an Issues paper raising a series of questions about the sentencing and management of offenders convicted of federal criminal offences. The Issues paper analyses the limited data available regarding federal offenders. More than 4,000 persons are convicted of federal offences each year, the bulk of these being summary social security offences. There are no available data on the sentencing outcomes for all federal offenders, but as at 1 January 2005 there were 687 federal offenders in state and territory prisons.

The word arson came into English law from Middle French about the same time as the Great Fire of London in 1688. It had two elements; the first was malicious damage to property and the second was a threat to the state by burning important symbols of the established order. For example, the burning of haystacks was as a symbol of rural unrest and was specifically mentioned in the legislation. It still remains in most current Australian legislation.

Bushfires arson, like structural arson, is a strongly patterned activity. These patterns seem to be mainly determined by the interplay between socioeconomic and environmental dynamics. Since the fundamentals of these two factors change slowly, bushfire arson tends to happen at the same time and in the same place every year.

The Australian Productivity Commission has calculated that between 2001–02 and 2006–07, the number bushfires in Australia varied from approximately 46,000 to 62,000 per year, with an average of nearly 54,000 fires per year (SGRSP 2008). This agrees quite closely with the average of nearly 52,000 fires per year calculated by the Australian Institute of Criminology (Bryant 2008) using data from fire agencies from 1995–06 to 2005–06. It is estimated that 50 percent of fires are either deliberately lit or suspicious in origin as shown in Figure 1.

Loss of human life and serious injury

Loss of life and serious injury. It has been calculated that 552 people have perished in bushfires in the past century (Haynes et al 2008) making it one of the leading causes of deaths from disasters. More people are injured from bushfires than all other natural disasters combined (AIC 2004).

The criminal justice system

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).

A report released by The Australian Institute of Criminology, "Drug Use Amongst Police Detainees: Some Comparative Data", shows higher levels of opiates amongst people recently detained by police in Australian and English sites than in USA sites. Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program is part of the International Arrestee Abuse Monitoring Program (IADAM), in which detainees are interviewed about their drug and crime history and then asked to provide a urine sample.

In 2000 the Northern Territory recorded its lowest homicide victimisation rate (3.06 per 100,000 people) since 1989. A Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice paper, "Homicide in Australia 1999-2000" provides a statistical snapshot of police recorded homicides in the last year, as well as information on trends over the last 11 years and jurisdictional comparisons. Trends show that the homicide rate for Australia has stayed remarkably constant. The highest rate recorded over the last 11 years was 2 per 100,000 and the lowest rate was 1.7 per 100,000.

During 1999-2000, the majority of heroin imported into Australia was detected in sea cargo. Figures released by the ABCI's Australian Illicit Drug Report 1999-2000 show that sea cargo accounted for 81 per cent of the total weight. The next most common methods of importation were airline passengers carrying heroin (11 per cent) and heroin concealed in airline cargo (7 per cent). Heroin imported through postal services made up only a small proportion of detections (1 per cent). Importer countries identified in the report included China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Official statistics have shown that people smuggling has increased worldwide, including to Australia. A paper presented at the Australian Institute of Criminology's 4th National Outlook Symposium on Crime in Australia, People Smuggling: Recent Trends and Changing Responses, provides a snapshot of the general trends emerging in the last few years. Figures recorded by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs show that the number of illegal entrants into Australia over the last three years has increased from 1,707 during 1997-98 to 5,870 in 1999-2000.