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A "whole of government" approach to crime prevention is very widespread in Australia. However, it is an approach that is not unique to crime prevention. Rather, it is an example of a more general shift in public administration away from a command and control mode of governance and towards governance through multiple stakeholders working together to deliver integrated solutions to social problems across sectors and tiers of government. In parts of the USA this is known as "networked government" while in the UK the approach is popularly known as "joined-up government".

The existence of an association between drug use and involvement in crime is widely accepted. Many studies have repeatedly established a close relationship between drugs and crime.

But what is the nature of this relationship? Does drug use cause or lead to crime? Or does crime lead to drug use? Could it be that those who use drugs and those who are inclined to be criminals just happen to share many characteristics in common?

Properly answering these questions has important public policy implications.

AICrime reduction matters no. 22 discussed the complex nature of the association between drug use and involvement in crime. It also highlighted the role of efforts to divert drug users from further crime involvement.

Drug courts first began in Australia in 1999. The aim of drug courts is to divert drug dependent offenders from the criminal justice system and into treatment. Their establishment represents a significant move towards a therapeutic model of offender management - shifting the focus from offenders and their actions to the problems and potential causes of their behaviour.

Indigenous people are over-represented at all stages of the criminal justice system in Australia. There are many suggested explanations for this, ranging from enduring institutionalised racism and differential treatment across the criminal justice system, to the effects of significant socio-economic disadvantage and actual higher levels of offending behaviour. This CRM summarises a number of the most important contemporary suggestions for helping to reduce offending in Indigenous communities.

Night patrols, in their various forms, are a common feature of Indigenous communities throughout Australia. They take on various names, roles and functions depending on the needs of the communities from which they operate. They may be known as street patrols, community patrols, foot or bare-foot patrols, mobile assistance patrols or street beat programs. They may provide a safe means of transport home or to refuges and safe houses for people at risk of offending or victimisation. Typically this includes young people or intoxicated adults.

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.

Shoplifting is one of the most common crimes affecting small businesses in Australia. More than one in five businesses that participated in the 1999 Small Business Crime Survey reported being the victim of shoplifting. It has been estimated that shoplifting costs Australian businesses around $810 million annually.

Like any Australians, older people are concerned about their safety. Australia's older population is growing rapidly, with one-quarter of the population projected to be over 65 years by the middle of the century. However, while it is a fact that older people are less at risk of criminal victimisation than other age groups, they tend to have a higher fear of crime than the general population.

The ultimate goal of crime prevention is to develop a highly reliable method for forecasting future crime trends and problems. If we can predict crime, we can develop prevention and reduction measures. But like reliably forecasting the weather, there are many errors in our methods and gaps in our skills. It is therefore not surprising that important developments can be very influential.

Measures to reduce residential burglary are always a major feature of crime prevention programs across the world. One of the most important of these programs was the Reducing burglary initiative (RBI), which was part of Britain's innovative Crime reduction programme (CRP). The RBI was designed to reduce the incidence of burglary nationally in England and Wales through targeting local action to those areas with the highest burglary rates.

Like any other economic market, the stolen goods market is largely driven by supply and demand. As such, property crime can be understood as a function of the ease of theft and the availability of a pool of willing buyers. The Market reduction approach (MRA) to reducing property crime focuses on shrinking the stolen goods market, by preventing supply and reducing the demand for stolen goods. Without an active market, disposal becomes difficult, risky and unrewarding. All of these factors have significant implications for an offender's willingness to engage in property crime.

Incarceration produces short-term reductions in crime because while in prison an offender simply cannot commit crime in the community. A longer-term crime reduction benefit is produced if those same offenders do not re-offend after they are released. However the experience of prison is often not a sufficient deterrent against future crime, and prison statistics show that in Australia and overseas, many ex-prisoners go on to commit new offences.

Aggressive driving behaviour is increasingly being seen as a characteristic of modern urban life which can result in crimes of violence. The Victorian Parliament's Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee recently conducted an inquiry into road violence and found that it was caused by the interaction between a mixture of person-related, situational, car-related and cultural factors, precipitated by a single triggering event. Solutions to the commission of violence involve strategies that address each of the causal antecedents. These can be divided into three inter-related categories:

'Spam' is an electronic version of 'junk mail' sent to a large number of people who do not request it, detailing products or services in which they may have no interest. Spam is sent by people who disguise their identity and whom it is difficult, if not impossible, to locate or deter. Senders of spam rely on the fact that, although most will reject the message, a minority of recipients will read and/or respond to it.