4513.0 - Criminal Courts, Australia, 2014-15 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 01/03/2016   
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IN THIS ISSUE

ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION

This publication presents nationally comparable statistics relating to the criminal jurisdictions of the Higher (Supreme and Intermediate), Magistrates' and Children's Courts across Australia for the period 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015. Defendants include persons charged with criminal offences for each court level as well as organisations charged with criminal offences for the Higher and Magistrates' Courts. The statistics are based on administrative records held by state and territory agencies responsible for the administration of the courts and describe the characteristics of defendants, including information on the offences, case outcomes and sentences associated with those defendants. Selected time series data are also included where available.

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

Changes to publication tables

Changes have been made to the publication tables to better meet the data needs of users of Criminal Courts data, as well as to improve usability and navigation of these tables. Most notably, data on the characteristics of those defendants finalised as proven guilty are now presented in a separate data cube. Additionally, data published for the proven guilty population have been expanded to include sex, age, principal offence, duration from initiation to finalisation, and more detailed principal sentence data. Other notable changes include:

  • Data have been presented by court level where possible, including sentence length and fine data;
  • Method of finalisation data have been expanded to include whether the defendant was proven guilty due to guilty plea by defendant, guilty finding by court or guilty ex-parte for selected states and territories;
  • Age data have been expanded in the national summary of characteristics tables including by single years for Children's Courts data; and
  • Sentence length ranges have been included for custody in a correctional institution, including by Indigenous status for relevant states and territories.
A detailed concordance between the 2013–14 and 2014–15 publication tables, as well as a guide to finding data items in the publication tables is available under the Downloads tab.

ROUNDING

Proportions and percentages cited in the publication text have been rounded up/down to the nearest whole number.

FURTHER INFORMATION

A list of other ABS publications relating to crime and justice statistics can be found on the Related Information tab.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The ABS acknowledges the valuable contribution of the Board of Management of the National Criminal Courts Statistics Unit, the National Criminal Courts Statistics Advisory Group, the Court Practitioners' Group and the staff of the various agencies that provide the data presented in this publication.

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070, or email client.services@abs.gov.au. The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to us.