Intellectual property (IP) rights are legal rights that protect inventors and creators from unauthorised copying or other uses of their work. In general, it is an infringement to reproduce, distribute, publish or offer for sale another person's work unless this is authorised by the owner of the IP rights in the work. Infringement of IP rights may result in civil litigation or criminal prosecution. Maximum penalties for copyright offences in Australia are five years' imprisonment and substantial fines, while trade mark offences carry maximum two years' imprisonment and fines.
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Not much is known about the risk and fear of different kinds of crime, including fraud, among older people. It is often thought that older people are more afraid of crime than others. However, research paints a more complex picture with certain groups being more fearful and vulnerable than others (Chivite-Matthews & Maggs 2002). When planning crime prevention and community safety interventions it is important to remember that there is considerable diversity among older people (see CRM 29).
Many crime prevention and criminal justice responses involve interventions with people who are in contact with a number of justice or welfare agencies. CRM 38 and 41 both address evaluation and outline how to set up measures, indicators and outcomes for the evaluation of programs. Intended outcomes of programs may not be manifest in the short term, but seek to prevent involvement in the justice system or to reduce recidivism in the longer term.
Communities That Care (CTC) is a socio-developmental model of community crime prevention planning. It draws on the risk and protective factor theory that arose from studies showing associations between certain conditions in a child's life and the likelihood of them later engaging in problem behaviour.
The formation of partnerships between communities, government agencies and/or business groups is frequently a powerful approach to the prevention of crime. However, the establishment of crime prevention partnerships should not be an automatic response to all crime problems. Furthermore, partnerships need to be carefully planned and managed and their ongoing effectiveness monitored. This is because even appropriate partnership arrangements can be difficult to implement and costly to maintain (Homel 2005).
In recent years finding a 'what works' catalogue for crime prevention action has become of prime importance for practitioners and professionals in the field. If we can just work out what crime prevention tools work best when and where, then we can successfully apply these to similar problems.
Action research is a technique designed to actively bring about change in a situation while researching the change as it occurs. It is a deliberately interventionist strategy which stands in contrast to observational and experimental studies, neither of which may have any direct impact on the situation in practical application. This technique achieved tangible results in the context of crime prevention in the Boston Gun Project's Operation Ceasefire (Kennedy, Braga & Piehl 2001).
Crime prevention partnerships are often beneficial, but relationships between different agencies can affect success (see CRM no. 49). Even when partnerships are successful, there is often some form of tension in the relationship. Cohen and Gould (2003) refer to this as turf wars. The turf can include resources, time, recognition for work or funding, and tension can exist on many levels: between members and lead agencies, between individual agency representatives and the partnership, and between individual members of the partnership.
Police responses to domestic violence have been examined by a number of ombudsmans' offices across Australia, (WA Ombudsman 2003, Qld Crime and Misconduct Commission 2005, NSW Ombudsman 2006), with many findings consistent across the reports. The NSW report found that areas where domestic violence was rife were also those least equipped to deal with it. Police felt that policing domestic violence was a complex and frustrating task due to its violent nature and the cumbersome court processes associated with applying for an ADVO.
Early intervention aims to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors that impact on the likelihood that a young person will engage in offending behaviour. As a crime prevention strategy, it is based on the premise that intervening early in a young person's development can produce significant long term personal, social and economic benefits.
The prevalence of cannabis and volatile substance misuse in rural and remote communities in Australia has become a growing concern in recent years (Gray et al. 2006; Delahunty & Putt 2006a). However, evidence suggests that mainstream drug policing strategies in these settings are generally not practical. A good practice framework has been developed to assist police in their responses to illicit drug use amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in rural and remote areas of Australia (Delahunty & Putt 2006b).
Identity crime includes both identify fraud and identity theft. Put simply, identity theft is when a person fraudulently assumes another's identity, and identity fraud is unauthorised use of another person's personal information.
A national farm crime survey in 2003 found that 17 percent of farms experienced farm crime at least once in the previous 12 months (Anderson & McCall 2005). From the sample who replied, farm crime was estimated to cost the Australian economy at least $70 million annually. Highly accessible farms close to regional or urban centres were more likely to experience theft of farm machinery, vehicles or tools, or burglary, whereas very remote farms experienced the highest levels of livestock theft, illegal hunting and fishing, theft of materials, and illegal dumping of waste.
From time to time public pressure arises for a public sex offender register similar to those in parts of the USA. The Australian National Child Offender Register (ANCOR) allows police to share information between jurisdictions on convicted offenders, but currently there are no publicly accessible registries. The best known US measure, Megan's Law, aims to promote public and community safety through heightened public awareness of the location of sex offenders (Fitch 2006).