OFFENCE INFORMATION
Offence data in this publication are presented using a standard offence classification and an alternative non-standard view of the types of federal offences that are finalised for defendants. ASOC provides a basis for the standard collection, analysis and dissemination of offence data within Crime and Justice statistics. For more information, see Explanatory Notes paragraph 20. Chapter 2 presents information on the number of offences finalised, as well as the principal federal offence.
Principal federal offence
When presenting information on defendants in this publication, the offence categories referred to relate to the defendants most serious federal offence, known as the 'principal federal' offence. Whilst it is possible for a defendant to be charged with multiple offences under Commonwealth legislation as well as state/territory legislation, only offences enacted under Commonwealth legislation are considered in scope of this publication.
Where defendants are represented by multiple federal offences, they would be assigned a principal federal offence based on the method of finalisation and/or the most serious offence type using an ordinal ranking from the National Offence Index (NOI) 2009.
An alternative view of the types of federal offences is presented in Chapter 3. The offence types used in this chapter are not based on an official standard but have been created to compile groupings of Commonwealth offences of particular interest to users, using Act and section information. These groupings may comprise a range of offences that reside in a number of different ASOC subdivisions. For more information about these non-standard offence groupings and their concordance to Commonwealth Acts/Section and ASOC division, refer to Appendix 4.
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