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The use of roadside breath testing has long been a feature of the law enforcement response to drink driving. However, it is only since 2004 and only in some states that roadside testing has been extended to include the detection of drugs other than alcohol. Based on self-reported rates from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, in 2007 it was estimated that 12 percent of Australians aged 14 years or over had driven a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, and three percent had driven while under the influence of illegal drugs in the past 12 months (AIHW 2008).

The International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS), which commenced in 1989, uses standardised survey instruments to gather internationally comparative data on criminal victimisation. The most recent survey in 2003-04 reported data from 30 mostly developed countries, including Australia. Burglary was one of the various crime types canvassed in the survey and its prevalence was estimated as the percentage of households that reported being burgled in the 12 months before the survey. In Australia, the prevalence of burglary was estimated at 2.5 percent.

The consumption of alcohol in Australia is widespread, but public support varies for measures that may prevent alcohol-related problems, such as disorder and violence. The 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) estimated that around 90 percent of Australians aged 14 years or over had ever consumed at least one full glass of alcohol, while nearly half (49%) had consumed alcohol at least once a week in the past 12 months (AIHW 2008).

The Australian Institute of Criminology's National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) has monitored homicides in Australia since 1989. NHMP data indicate that homicide, followed by the suicide of the offender either immediately after or within a short period of killing one or more victims, is a relatively infrequent event. Out of the total number of homicide incidents recorded by the NHMP (n=5,486), six percent (n=343) are classified as murder-suicides and 80 percent of these occurred in the context of intimate and/or family relationships.

A recent research paper highlights the steady increase in assaults against young Australians recorded by police (Bricknell 2008). National health data also show that the incidence of assault-related injuries to young Australians that result in hospitalisation continues to increase (AIHW 2008). The assault hospitalisation rate (the number of hospitalisations due to assault per 100,000 young people - those aged between 12 and 24 years) increased by 27 percent between 1996-97 and 2005-06. The increase for males (29%) was far greater than that for females (19%).

An increase in recorded sexual assault of young people was a major contributor to an overall rise in recorded sexual assault since the mid-1990s. As data are based on the date of reporting, which may be some time, even years, after the date of occurrence, it is not clear whether this increase relates to current or past events. In the period between 1996 and 2003, the incidence of recorded sexual assault for children aged 0-14 years accounted for around 40 percent of all recorded sexual assaults (Bricknell 2008).

The Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program surveys about 4,000 police detainees annually from sites around Australia about their drug usage. Eighty percent of those surveyed voluntarily provide a urine sample. Ecstasy (MDMA) is a relatively small but increasing component of the drug profile of police detainees. Approximately two percent of those surveyed across all sites in 2007 reported using MDMA in the previous 48 hours. Most drugs that police detainees reported taking corresponded reasonably well with urinalysis results (McGregor & Makkai 2003).

Figures from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey show that some 806,000 people in Australia experienced personal fraud in a recent 12-month period (ABS 2008). The survey, funded by the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce, showed personal financial losses of almost $977 million, with a median financial loss of $453 per person. The victimisation rate was five percent of the population aged 15 years or more: three percent through identity fraud, and two percent through scams.

Data from a recent study of the reintegration of Indigenous prisoners show that released Indigenous prisoners are more likely to be readmitted to prison than non-Indigenous prisoners (Willis & Moore 2008). The study analysed data from all Australian jurisdictions on 8,938 prisoners released in a two-year period, all of whom had been convicted and imprisoned for a violent offence. Some 35 percent of prisoners in the sample were Indigenous. Within two years of release, 55 percent of Indigenous prisoners had been returned to prison, compared with 31 percent of non-Indigenous prisoners.

The Australian Institute of Criminology has compiled a detailed database of the nearly 6,000 homicides committed in Australia over 18 years (1989-2007), through its National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP). Analysis of the NHMP shows that intimate-partner homicide rates have decreased from around 0.5 per 100,000 of the population per year in the late 1980s and early 1990s to 0.4 per 100,000 per year in the early to mid 2000s, a decrease of one-quarter.

From when the National Homicide Monitoring Program began, in 1989-90, to the last reporting period, of 2006-07, there have been 752 homicide victims aged 17 or younger. The proportion of child victims has increased from 12 percent of all homicides in 1989-90 to just under 15 percent in 2006-07. This is principally an increase, as a proportion of all homicide victims, in under-10-year-olds. This has come about because, of children aged less than 10, the proportion killed each year has remained steady as the proportion of the general population falling victim to homicide has fallen.

In the 12 months preceding an ABS survey interview, the incidence of any mental disorder in individuals who had at some time been incarcerated was greater than in those who had not (ABS 2008). Of the 385,100 individuals who reported having ever been incarcerated, 41 percent reported having had a mental-health disorder in the 12 months preceding the interview. This is more than double the incidence of such disorders (19%) in individuals who reported that they had never been incarcerated.

Australians who use computers at home make extensive use of internet security devices, according to the AusCERT home users computer security survey 2008. Some 94 percent of those surveyed said they had antivirus software installed on their home computers, 72 percent also having anti-spam filtering and 86 percent having firewall tools. The overwhelming majority (75%) did not have or use parental-control or content-filtering software.

The overwhelming majority of jurors understand judicial instructions and judges' summing-up of evidence in criminal trials, according to a report by the New South Wales (NSW) Law Reform Commission and the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (Trimboli 2008). The report is based on a survey from July 2007 to February 2008 of 1,221 jurors involved in selected criminal trials in the Supreme Court and District Court of NSW. Respondents completed the surveys at the end of the relevant trial, juror participation being voluntary.

Since 2003–04, government funding for justice services in Australia has experienced an average annual growth rate of 3.4 percent according to the Report on Government Services 2009 (Productivity Commission 2009). Net justice-funded expenditure (i.e. expenditure minus revenue from own sources) finances police services, court administration for criminal and civil matters and corrective services. The total expense for justice services has risen consistently from $9.4b in 2003–04 to over $10.7b in 2007–08.