News

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, June 2014

This Trends & issues paper investigates the security of high rise high density accommodation at the Gold Coast – a premier Australian holiday destination.

Surfers Paradise has one of the highest population densities in Australia at 3,279 persons per square kilometre and over 70 percent of the residential population live in buildings classed as high density within a mix of tourist apartments and units.

By analysing actual rates across 10 crime types, guardianship levels, building management styles and perceptions of fear of crime, the research reveals how planning policies and high-rise building management styles can create safer vertical communities.

In long-term residential buildings, researchers observed very high levels of guardianship – i.e. individuals who provide natural, informal surveillance for a potential crime target. This was absent in any mixed or short-term tenure buildings.

Statistically, across the crime types, recorded offences were very low at long-term residential buildings, but in mixed residential buildings, average recorded offences were highest at those buildings where the lowest levels of guardianship were observed.

Offences were considerably lower at those mixed buildings with higher observed guardianship by residents. A strong finding was the highly consistent pattern of concentration, whereby a small group of buildings were responsible for the majority of crimes, regardless of crime type examined.

It appears that building managers of short-term and mixed tenure buildings are best placed to impact the opportunity structure of crimes. Such findings around strengthened guardianship and management of mixed and short-term tenancy accommodation could be helpful to the property management industry, local government and tourism.

Latest UNODC publication

Foreword | This paper models the connection between the rate of terrorist events and the occurrence of counter-terrorism interventions in order to examine the relative effectiveness of the interventions. Using data from the Global Terrorism Database and information on interventions collected by the authors, model results show that for Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, reactive types of interventions, such as arrests, indictments, imprisonments, assassinations and other operational activities show the strongest association with the rate of terrorism incidents over time. Maximum effectiveness—as measured by the number of days after an intervention exhibits its full inhibitory effect on the risk of subsequent terrorist attacks—was found to be greatest in Indonesia and the Philippines (11 days and 8 days respectively) and least effective in Thailand (impacting only on the day the intervention occurred). This paper also examines the number of days after an intervention that the response was able to maintain a high level of effectiveness—17 days in Indonesia, 13 days in the Philippines and one day in Thailand. There were significant differences across these three countries and these results highlight a new approach to conceptualising the interaction between terrorism and counter-terrorism efforts.

Domestic violence has been identified as the leading cause of physical injuries to women of reproductive age and a factor implicated in approximately 60 percent of Australian homicide cases involving a female victim.

This paper examines victims’ short and long-term experiences of safety and wellbeing after being supported through a six week police-led integrated response to domestic violence in Caboolture, Southeast Queensland. The objective of this integrated response was to create safer home environments for women and children affected by domestic violence.

Findings are based on pre and post-support surveys results on self-rated safety and wellbeing, along with results from in-depth follow-up interviews with a small number of survey respondents who were supported through an integrated response to domestic violence.

While survey results indicate a significant improvement in women’s self-rated safety and wellbeing throughout the initial support period, qualitative follow-up interviews reveal that women still experienced ongoing forms of abuse, harassment and stalking by the abusive ex-partner after the initial support period. This suggests that the initially established level of safety and wellbeing of women and children may not be sustainable without ongoing support.

This report summarises the latest trends across the 28 EU Member States, Turkey and Norway. This top-level analysis explores drug supply, drug use and drug-related problems, health and social responses to drug problems, and drug policies.