OVERVIEW

This chapter presents statistics about police proceedings during the period 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2014 for all states and territories, except Western Australia (for further information refer to paragraph 60 of the Explanatory Notes). As a consequence, national data are not available for police proceedings.

The statistics presented here describe the number of separate occasions on which an offender had a legal action (court or non-court action) initiated against them by police. Whilst these statistics refer specifically to court and non-court proceedings that were initiated by state and territory police only, the terms "proceedings", "court actions" and "non-court actions" have been used for simplicity.

Each proceeding is classified to a principal offence and a principal method of proceeding. For definitions of these terms, refer to Explanatory Notes, paragraphs 13-16 and paragraph 46.

These data provide a count of police initiated legal proceedings. Please note it is not a count of offences nor a count of offenders. For more information about offenders refer to Chapters 2 to 5 of this publication.

Certain offences are excluded from the Recorded Crime - Offenders collection. For further information about the scope and counting methodology for the collection refer to paragraphs 3-16 of the Explanatory Notes.

In this collection, national statistical standards and counting rules have been applied to facilitate comparisons of states and territories. However, some legislative and processing differences remain. For differences in legislation, processes or policies between states, refer to paragraphs 48-69 of the Explanatory Notes.

Between 2012-13 and 2013-14 the number of proceedings increased in the following states and territories (Tables 20 – 26):

• Queensland (17,294 proceedings, or 12%);
• New South Wales (13,488 proceedings, or 8%);
• Northern Territory (4,996 proceedings, or 28%);
• South Australia (3,516 proceedings, or 6%); and
• Australian Capital Territory (79 proceedings, or 2%).

Over the same period the number of proceedings decreased in the remaining jurisdictions:

• Victoria (3,669 proceedings, or 3%); and
• Tasmania (1,837 proceedings, or 11%).