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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 | This paper examines the extent to which participants in the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program under-report their drug use. DUMA participants are asked to answer a questionnaire about their use of drugs, as well as to supply a urine sample. This sample is tested for the presence of illicit drugs and compared with the self-reported answers in the questionnaire.

Foreword | In some countries, collecting statistics about the occurrence of homicide is not possible, either because of a lack of resources or because of the sheer volume of incidents. Fortunately in Australia there are three main data collection systems that produce largely independent sets of statistics on homicide: the National Homicide Monitoring Program at the Australian Institute of Criminology, and the Recorded Crime Australia and Causes of Death collections managed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Foreword | One way that Australian correctional authorities can safeguard the community is by incapacitating offenders and keeping them away from potential victims. The community can also be protected in the longer term by minimising the likelihood of ex-prisoners reoffending after they are released. One strategy for reducing the risk of recidivism is the provision of treatment, services and support to prisoners during their incarceration and after their release. This approach is gaining prominence in Australia and internationally.

The Criminology Research Act 1971 provides for a Criminology Research Advisory Council that advises the Director of the AIC on strategic research priorities for the AIC, communications and the effective dissemination of crime and criminal justice information and makes recommendations as to the grants to be made by the Director each year under the Criminology Research Grants program.

Foreword | Women's drug use is believed to be a defining factor in their participation in crime and it is argued that the severity of women's drug use is more closely related to their criminality than it is for men, particularly for prostitution and property crime. Women's drug use and offending are different from men's.

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 | Farm crime has a significant effect on the farming industry and community as a whole, especially in times of hardship such as drought. In order to understand how significant farm crime is in Australia, the Australian Institute of Criminology is conducting three annual surveys on farm crime. This paper summarises the results from the second National Farm Crime Survey (NFCS). A total of 1309 broadacre and dairy farms were surveyed about their experiences of crime between 1 July 2001 and 30 June 2002.

Foreword | This paper examines the illegal drug using and criminal careers of participants in the Drug Use Careers of Offenders (DUCO) project. The project surveyed 2,135 adult male offenders who were incarcerated in prisons in Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory in mid-2001.

A popular urban view of rural life is that it represents an escape from much of what makes life in the cities seem so unpleasant and difficult. This includes crime. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with popular beliefs, the reality is somewhat different. Until recently, there has been little empirical evidence to document the extent of farm crime in Australia.

Foreword | An examination of firearm related deaths in Australia between 1991 and 2001 found a 47 per cent decrease in numbers, with a fall in the number of suicides accounting for the largest part of that decrease. Nine out of 10 firearm related deaths involved males. Compared to firearm related suicides and accidents where less than 10 per cent involved the death of a female, a higher proportion of homicides involved a female victim (33%). Persons under the age of 15 years were least likely to die as a result of a firearm related injury.

Foreword | In their Trends and Issues paper, "Red Flags of Fraud", Grabosky and Duffield (2001) identified a number of warning signals for fraud, or anomalies. While the existence of anomalies is not always indicative of criminality, they do signify heightened risks that should be investigated further.