POLICE PROCEEDINGS
An offender may be proceeded against more than once by police during the reference period. Police proceedings represent a count for each separate occasion on which police initiate a legal action against an offender. Depending on the type of offence committed, police will either initiate a court or non-court action. Court actions largely comprise the laying of charges against an alleged offender that must be answered in court. Offenders may be taken into custody, granted bail or issued with a summons for these charges pending an appearance in court. It should be noted that not all court proceedings initiated by police will proceed to a criminal court. The proceeding may be withdrawn or changed from a court to a non-court action at a later stage of the investigation.
Non-court actions comprise legal actions such as informal or formal cautions/warnings, conferencing, counselling such as drug diversionary schemes, or the issuing of penalty or infringement notices, which do not require an appearance at court.
The following analysis on police proceedings is based on the aggregate data for all jurisdictions, except Western Australia. National data are not available for police proceedings counts. For more information see Explanatory Notes paragraph 44.
Excluding Western Australia, there were 486,042 police-initiated proceedings during 2009-10, an increase of 6% (25,598) from 2008-09. The majority (65%) of proceedings related to police-initiated court actions against offenders during 2009-10, however there was an increase in the proportion of police proceedings that were non-court actions from 32% in 2008-09 to 35% in 2009-10. The proportion of non-court actions in both years have increased following the revisions to Victorian data to include penalty/infringement notices not stored on the Victorian Police's information system that were previously unavailable (refer to Explanatory Notes paragraphs 37-38).
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