POLICE PROCEEDINGS

The following analysis of police proceedings excludes Western Australia. National data are not available for police proceedings counts. For more information see Explanatory Notes paragraph 59. New South Wales data are presented separately at the end of this chapter. For more information see paragraphs 45-47 of the Explanatory Notes. All data presented in this chapter are based on tables in Data Cube 2 Police Proceedings.

The number of police proceedings decreased between 2010-11 and 2011-12 in the Australian Capital Territory (5%), South Australia (2%) and Tasmania (1%) while they increased in the Northern Territory (11%), Victoria (6%) and Queensland (4%). Movements in the number of police proceedings for the selected states and territories were in line with changes to the unique offender population with the exception of Tasmania (where the number of police proceedings decreased while the number of unique offenders increased slightly).

POLICE PROCEEDINGS, Selected states and territories - 2008-09 to 2011-12(a)(b)
					Change in proceedings 2010-11 to 2011-12		Change in offenders 2010-11 to 2011-12
	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11	2011-12	Number	%	%
Vic.	92 385	104 643	106 283	113 072	6 789	6.4	6.1
Qld	132 551	138 996	129 312	134 750	5 438	4.2	2.5
SA(c)	47 033	48 254	49 683	48 695	-988	-2.0	-4.1
Tas.	21 840	21 821	20 834	20 543	-291	-1.4	0.3
NT	13 621	14 509	12 710	14 116	1 406	11.1	7.2
ACT(d)	4 492	r4 099	r4 246	4 045	-201	-4.7	-2.3
r revised
(a) Excludes Western Australia (see Explanatory Notes paragraph 59).
(b) Proceedings data for New South Wales are presented separately (see Explanatory Notes paragraphs 45-47).
(c) South Australian data may be overstated (see Explanatory Notes paragraphs 57-58).
(d) Australian Capital Territory data may be overstated (see Explanatory Notes paragraphs 70-71).

The majority of proceedings in 2011-12 were police-initiated court actions. The proportion of police proceedings that were court actions differed across the selected states and territories, from 51% in Victoria to 79% in Queensland.

The proportion of police proceedings that were court actions decreased between 2010-11 and 2011-12 for each of the selected states and territories except Victoria and South Australia, where the proportion increased marginally. The largest decrease occurred in the Australian Capital Territory, where the proportion of police-initiated court proceedings decreased by 4 percentage points from 60% in 2010-11 to 56% in 2011-12. This decrease in the Australian Capital Territory can be partially explained by the introduction of Criminal Infringement Notices (CINs) over the last two years which are non-court proceedings.

Generally, there has been a declining trend in the use of court actions and a corresponding rising trend in the use of non-court actions over the last four years. This reflects changes to legislation and policing practices regarding street and public order offences introduced over the last few years and the associated increased use of penalty infringement notices.

Court actions

Acts intended to cause injury was the most prevalent principal offence for court proceedings for all selected states and territories except Queensland. Court proceedings for Acts intended to cause injury accounted for:

• 39% of all court initiated proceedings in the Northern Territory;
• 28% in the Australian Capital Territory;
• 26% in Victoria;
• 23% in South Australia; and
• 21% in Tasmania.

In Queensland, the most prevalent offence type for court proceedings was Public order offences (19%).

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