The acceptance of gifts and benefits – or ‘gratuities’ – has been described as ‘a police image problem that doesn’t seem to go away’ . This assertion was borne out recently in the ‘phone hacking scandal’ in the United Kingdom, when the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police resigned following allegations that...

This report provides a detailed examination of human DNA in drugs and the feasibility of extracting from it information useful for policing. The expected outcomes of the project were to: • identify how frequently drugs contain human DNA; • assess the relative merits of various methods for profiling this DNA and make recommendations on which...

Monitoring international trends in drug production and supply has been a key function of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC); it regularly provides between-country comparative data in the World Drug Report and the Global Illicit Drug Trends Report. These data, typically on drug detections and drug-related arrests, are combined with intelligence and...

Estimating the extent to which criminal activity can be attributed to substance use is a challenging but important task. Quantifying the nexus between drugs and crime contributes to a robust assessment of the cost and burden of alcohol and drug abuse to the Australian community. For the criminal justice system in particular, drug crime estimates...

This report details the findings of a Review of Victoria Police use of ‘stop and search’ powers associated with the control of weapons. The OPI review found little evidence to suggest that concerns have been realised relating to arbitrary use of powers or the targeting of particular groups. It also found that Victoria Police is...