Jason Payne evaluates the implementation, operation and outcomes of the pilot program for 26 months from its inception in 2002. The program operates within the Cairns and Townsville magistrates' courts, and aims to target and divert into treatment, rather than prison, high-volume property or drug offenders whose offending is attributable to their drug dependency. The...

Jenny Mouzos presents information on the circumstances and characteristics of homicide in Australia for 2003-04. This report also contains jurisdictional breakdowns for comparative purposes and some long-term trend data across the fifteen-year NHMP data collection period. In 2003-04, there was a total of 288 incidents of homicide recorded. These were committed by 310 offenders and...

Migrants face special challenges in a new country, especially if their language, skin colour, religion or cultural practices set them apart. To assess the experiences of crime among migrants, the Australian component of the 2004 International Crime Victimisation Survey sampled migrants who were born or whose parents were born in Vietnam or the Middle East...

Underground banking, where money is transferred through informal rather than formal banking sectors, is a recognised method by which legitimate remittances from overseas workers are routinely transferred. However, underground banking has also long been regarded as a conduit for money laundering by criminal organisations and arguably by terrorist networks. Rob McCusker provides an overview of...

Investigations into the possession of online child sexual abuse images reveal enormous variety in the types of images collected by adults with a sexual interest in children, illustrating that the concept is broad, changeable and, at the margins, elusive. The use of criminal law to regulate any activity requires that the proscribed conduct be clearly...