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Foreword | The clandestine nature of trafficking in persons means that there is little reliable data about the nature and extent of the crime; however, a picture is emerging of the nature of people trafficking as the number of prosecutions grows.

Foreword | Estimating the use of illicit drugs in the general community is an important task with ramifications for law enforcement agencies, as well as health portfolios. Australia has four ongoing drug monitoring systems, including the AIC’s DUMA program, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, the Illicit Drug Reporting System and the Ecstasy and Related Drug Reporting System. The systems vary in methods, but broadly they are reliant upon self-report data and may be subject to selection biases. The present study employed a completely different method.

Foreword | Consumer fraud costs Australians almost $1b a year and most of this fraud involves scams in which individuals are persuaded to part with an upfront, or advance, fee, with the promise of large financial or other gain in the future.

Foreword | In 2006, the Australian Government introduced the Anti-money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) which increased regulatory controls over businesses potentially able to facilitate organised criminal activities such as money laundering. The implementation of tougher legislation and associated law enforcement interventions may result in criminal organisations adjusting their tactics in order to continue their activities without detection.

Foreword | There has recently been renewed interest in place-based approaches for targeting crime prevention, such as justice reinvestment. This project linked research from life course and place-based criminology to explore whether some communities generated chronic and costly offenders. The Semi-Parametric Group-based Method was used to identify non-normative or chronic offenders in the 1990 Queensland Longitudinal Dataset (n=14,171).

Foreword | The Australian heavy vehicle industry is critical to the movement of people, freight, livestock and other goods. However, every year there are deaths and serious injuries on Australian roads, some of which are caused by speeding heavy vehicles.

Foreword | This paper reports findings from statistical analyses of Indigeneity and lower court sentencing in New South Wales and South Australia from 1998 to 2008. The aim was to explore the probability of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous defendants receiving a prison sentence over time, while controlling for other key sentencing determinates (ie sex, age, criminal history, seriousness of current offence, plea, bail status).

The Criminology Research Grants (CRG) program is a procurement exercise administered by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), taking into account the advice of the Criminology Research Advisory Council. Funding for the program comes from Commonwealth, state and territory governments and is administered in line with Commonwealth Procurement Rules.

The objectives of the CRG program are to support research relevant to current and future public policy issues, to foster quality criminological research and to ensure that funded research is disseminated effectively.