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INTRODUCTION

This publication presents statistics relating to the criminal jurisdiction of the Higher (Supreme and Intermediate) and Magistrates' Courts of Australia, for the period 1 July 2001-30 June 2002. The criminal jurisdiction of the courts is responsible for trying and sentencing persons or organisations charged with criminal offences. The statistics are based on data extracted from administrative records held by state and territory agencies responsible for courts administration.

The publication provides a picture of the characteristics of defendants dealt with by the Higher Criminal Courts, including information on the offences and sentence types associated with those defendants. In the previous issue of this publication, offence and sentence type data were considered experimental and included in the Appendixes. However, due to significant data quality improvements, this information is now available in the main suite of tables.

Summary data relating to the criminal workload of the Higher Courts are also provided for individual years from 1996-97 onwards.

For the first time in this publication, information on the characteristics of defendants finalised in the criminal jurisdiction of the Magistrates' Courts, including offence and sentence type information associated with those defendants, is presented. These tables have been labelled experimental and are included in Appendix 1 in the publication.

The Explanatory Notes provide detailed information on the data sources, definitions, counting rules and other technical matters associated with this publication.


KEY FINDINGS

The key findings for defendants finalised in the Higher Criminal Courts during 2001-02 are:

• The number of finalisations decreased by less than 1% (32) between 2000-01 and 2001-02 to 17,997 defendants.

• Approximately 85% (15,229) of defendants were finalised by adjudication (i.e.proven guilty or acquitted). The remaining defendants were finalised by a non-adjudicated method such as all charges being withdrawn by the prosecution.

• Nearly one in two defendants finalised by adjudication were males aged between 20 and 34 years. Males represented 88% of all defendants finalised by adjudication.

• For both male and female adjudicated defendants, the principal offence category with the highest proportion was acts intending to cause injury (including assault) (21% for males and 19% for females). Males were more likely than females to have a principal offence related to sexual assault (12% of males, 1% of females) while offences related to deception were the principal offence for 17% of females and 6% of males.

• For all adjudicated defendants, 92% were proven guilty and the remaining 8% were acquitted. The proportion of acquittals varied across offence categories ranging from 25% for sexual assault and related offences to 2% for deception and related offences.

• For defendants proven guilty, one in two (54%) received a custodial order (excluding fully suspended sentences) as their principal sentence type. For both males and females, these orders were the most likely principal sentence type. However, the proportion was higher for males than for females (57% of males and 38% of females).

• The median duration for finalised defendants was 20 weeks, compared with 21 weeks in 2000-01. The largest reduction in the median duration for finalised defendants was in New South Wales (decreased by 13% or 3 weeks).

• Of all adjudicated defendants, those that received a guilty verdict had a median duration of 47 weeks, and those that were acquitted at trial had a median duration of 37 weeks. For those who pleaded guilty the median duration was 17 weeks.