There are two reports in this volume. They are divided into sections, as follows:
The Chair of the Board of Management and the Director of the Institute review the significant issues and achievements for the year, provide a snapshot of performance and highlight expected developments for the coming year.
Foreword | As the internet and other forms of information and communications technology advances, opportunities for child sexual offenders and other financially-motivated cybercriminals to sexually exploit children will increase. Official statistics here and overseas indicate the number of investigations and prosecutions remain small but are increasing rapidly. This paper discusses non-legislative measures to address the issue of online child exploitation, particularly child grooming.
Foreword | Many Indigenous communities are concerned about substance abuse and community safety. This report confirms what we already know: Indigenous men have higher levels of contact with the criminal justice system, at an earlier age. However, Indigenous patterns of drug use and dependency contribute to the commission of crime in a quite distinct fashion. Indigenous offenders report higher levels of use and dependency on alcohol and cannabis than their non-Indigenous peers.
The JV Barry Library was established in 1974 and is a major criminal justice information resource that supports the information needs of the Institute's research programs and provides services to key stakeholders and other clients.
Members of the public may access the library catalogue and search for AIC publications from here.
The literature on hate crime in the last 15 years covers a wealth of surveys, research and theories on crimes of bias/prejudice which target another person because of their sexuality, race, ethnicity or religion. There are inherent difficulties associated with research into the most extreme form of hate crime—homicide, and more specifically gay-hate related homicides. Some of these difficulties include the accurate identification, classification and recording of these incidents once the primary witness has been killed.
The idea of deterrence is one of the oldest and most basic concepts of crime prevention. Put simply, the idea of deterrence is that if you do something wrong and are caught, then the subsequent punishment will deter you from doing that wrong again. The fear of future punishment therefore discourages or deters transgressing of social norms expressed through the law.
Foreword | Courts in the United States, Europe and Australia have in recent years experimented with sanctions which require the computer of an offender convicted of high tech crimes to be forfeited, or which seek to prohibit the offender from undertaking certain, or all, computer-related activities like possessing or using computers or gaining access to the internet.
The probability that bushfires (all vegetation fires irrespective of size) will occur on high to very high or extreme bushfire weather days is affected by both climatic conditions and human action:
"People don't seem to handle their anger well any more." These words were spoken by an official of an industry staff association whose members are widely subjected to customer harassment. The comment highlights an apparently growing phenomenon in the workplace: aggression expressed by consumers/clients/customers and others toward service providers.
Intelligence-led policing is defined as the application of criminal intelligence analysis as a rigorous decision making tool to facilitate crime reduction and prevention through effective policing strategies. Three structures (criminal environment, intelligence and the decision maker) and three processes (interpret, influence and impact) are identified as necessary for an intelligence-led policing model to work. The first stage of the model is being able to interpret the criminal environment.