The criminogenic profile of violent female offenders incarcerated in Western Australian prisons as per the Level of Service/Risk, Need, Responsivity (LS/RNR) and Violence Risk Scale (VRS).

Female offender risk assessment is predominantly based on criminogenic factors that predict reoffending in males. Research indicates there are criminogenic factors specific to female offenders, and certain factors linked to offending for both sexes have greater impact on female offenders. This paper extends current research using a Western Australian sample to determine whether findings are replicated with an Australian cohort. Gender differences in the criminogenic profile of 1704 violent offenders (9% female), assessed using the Level of Service/Risk, Need, Responsivity (LS/RNR) and Violence Risk Scale (VRS), were analysed using a matched sample study design. There were significant gender differences on all components of the LS/RNR, except criminal history. In the subsequent matched study, these differences varied, and females scored significantly lower on all VRS-SV items, except age. Gender differences in violence risk scores were clear, providing support for gender-responsive assessment and treatment of violent female offenders, with further validation needed.

Effects of Automated Messages on Internet Users Attempting to Access "Barely Legal" Pornography.

With the increasing number of individuals accessing online child sexual exploitation material (CSEM), there is an urgent need for primary prevention strategies to supplement the traditional focus on arrest and prosecution. We examined whether online warning messages would dissuade individuals from visiting a honeypot website purporting to contain barely legal pornography. Participants (n = 419) seeking the site were randomly assigned to one of five conditions; they went straight to the landing page (control; n = 100) or encountered a warning message advising of the potential harm to viewers (n = 74), potential harm to victims (n = 65), ability of police to track IP addresses (n = 81), or possible illegality of such pornography (n = 99). We measured the attempted click-through to the site. Attrition rates for the warning message conditions were 38% to 52%, compared with 27% for the control group. The most effective messages were those that warned that IP addresses can be traced (odds ratio [OR] = 2.64) and that the pornography may be illegal (OR = 2.99). We argue that warning messages offer a valuable and cost-effective strategy that can be scaled up to help reduce the accessing of CSEM online.

What does the public think about sex offender registers? Findings from a national Australian study.

This article presents data from questions about sex offender registration orders in a large national survey on Australian public opinion about adult sex offenders. It outlines the legislative frameworks that govern these registers in Australia and discusses the use of public registers, the research on the effectiveness of sex offender registers, and Australian attitudes to such registers. Our surveys of three cohorts of members of the Australian public reveal strong public support for sex offender registers, especially for cases involving child victims. However, there was also support for judicial discretion in the imposition of orders and reduced support for automatic registration where a non-custodial sentence is imposed. The Australian Government has recently announced the establishment of a national public sex offender register, but our findings show limited support for this approach. The implications for policy and practice are considered.

Assessing the Risk of Australian Indigenous Sexual Offenders Reoffending: A Review of the Research Literature and Court Decisions.

The assessment of offenders' risk of reoffending, particularly sexual reoffending, is a core activity of forensic mental health practitioners. The purpose of these assessments is to reduce the risk of harm to the public, but they are controversial and become more contentious when Australian practitioners who want to undertake such assessments in an ethically responsible way must use reliable validated instruments, disclose the limitations of their assessment methods, instruments and data to judicial decision-makers and understand how decision-makers might use their reports. The purpose of this systematic literature review was to explore the practices of Australian practitioners and courts in respect of the assessment of Australian Indigenous male sexual offenders' risk of reoffending. We could not identify an instrument that has been developed for the assessment of this population group. Australian courts differ in whether they admit and give weight to practitioners' evidence and opinions based on data obtained with non-validated instruments. We could only identify three possible predictor variables with enough quantitative support to justify including them in an instrument that could be used to assess Indigenous sexual offenders. There is a need for research regarding the validity of the instruments that practitioners use.

Exploring the educative role of judges' sentencing remarks: an analysis of remarks on child exploitation material.

The online viewing of child exploitation material (CEM) is a seemingly intractable problem. Evidence suggests that CEM is viewed not only by the paedophilic 'other', but by people without prior offending histories or pre-existing sexual interests in children. Studies emphasise the role of offence-supportive attitudes in enabling first-time offending. Relatedly, nascent research indicates that some sections of the Australian community express ambivalence about the harms involved in viewing such material. Taking a crime prevention perspective, this article considers the need and value of tackling such attitudes and the educative role that judges' sentencing comments may play. In doing so, this article presents a content analysis of judicial comments from Victoria and Tasmania. Encouragingly, results show that judges provide some explanation of the harms involved in most instances. Yet, some of the explanations that judges give may be perpetuating, rather than reducing, ambiguity about the wrongfulness of 'just' viewing CEM online.

The forensic examination of structural fires in Victoria, Australia: Decision-making processes and impact on judicial outcomes.

There is a body of published research that has evaluated the contribution of forensic science to the criminal justice system, but many disciplines of forensic science remain unexplored in this regard. The aim of this study was to examine the contribution that forensic fire examination services provide to criminal investigations and court processes in arson cases. Forensic fire examination services differ in a number of ways to the disciplines covered in previous research on the impact of forensic evidence on justice outcomes. Forensic fire examinations involve a combination of scene examination and laboratory analyses, and the results can provide critical evidence of whether an incident that has occurred is a criminal offence (i.e. whether a fire has occurred as the result of an act of arson). Forensic fire examination is also a discipline that has faced challenges and undergone development in recent decades regarding its scientific basis and the issue of contextual bias. In this study, data were collated for 273 structural fires that were examined by the forensic fire services in Victoria, Australia. In this jurisdiction, scene and laboratory forensic services are delivered within short time frames with a focus on providing impartial scientific and investigative services to assist criminal investigations conducted by police. The current dataset was highly skewed in terms of criminal justice outcomes and was not suitable for conducting the planned statistical analyses. Nonetheless, the pattern of findings obtained suggested that the inclusion of forensic evidence which supported the prosecution of arson may be associated with an increased likelihood of suspects being charged and defendants found guilty. Examination of the decision-making process of the forensic fire examiners has provided insight into the variety of evidence that is considered by forensic experts in reaching the important conclusion about the origin and cause of structural fires.

Forensic Experts' Perspectives on Australian Indigenous Sexual Offenders and Factors Important in Evaluating the Risk of Recidivism.

Law and ethics require that risk assessment should be cross-culturally valid and fair, but Australian research in this regard is underdeveloped. A logical first step in progressing the work required to build a strong evidence base on culturally sensitive risk assessment in Australia is to determine the expert views of those in the field. We interviewed 13 Australian evaluators who assess Indigenous sexual offenders' recidivism risk to determine their perceptions of the risk assessment instruments they use and the attributes they believe evaluators doing cross-cultural assessments should have. Our central findings are that evaluators use the available instruments because they believe that the same factors predict sexual recidivism for Indigenous and non-Indigenous offenders, but that they do so cautiously knowing the limitations of the instruments. Evaluators nevertheless want more research data to guide them when they use the available instruments to assess people from cultures that differ from those of people in the normative sample. Participants acknowledge that the unique challenges of assessing Indigenous sexual offenders require non-Indigenous evaluators to be culturally competent and confident. These findings should be valuable to evaluators and those who train or supervise evaluators and/or intend to establish or improve the validity of risk instruments in Australia.

To trace or not to trace: A survey of how police use and perceive chemical trace evidence.

There is limited information available about the impact of chemical trace evidence and it has tended to be anecdotal and mostly pertaining to court outcomes. Very little is known about the use of chemical trace evidence by police investigators or the impact that this evidence form has on criminal investigations. This survey, which was conducted in Victoria, Australia, was aimed at addressing these inadequacies by capturing information from police investigators about: (i) the purpose of using chemical trace and other forensic services; (ii) the expectation of what value forensic services would provide; (iii) the actual impact of forensic evidence in specified cases; and (iv) the general perceptions of forensic science. Police officers who were the lead investigators in a sample of criminal investigations were selected as the subjects for this survey. Each of the sample cases included chemical trace evidence and many of the cases also included other forms of forensic evidence. The police investigators indicated that they use chemical trace evidence with the expectation that it will assist decision-making in their investigations and contribute to building a case for court. Survey responses indicated that chemical trace evidence can impact on multiple stages of a case and that this form of evidence can play a part in guiding police investigators in making decisions about how their cases progress through the criminal justice system. It was found that an important aspect of the impact of chemical trace evidence can involve connections with other forensic and non-forensic evidence in the cases. The provision of preliminary results, prior to the formal written reports that are issued for use in court, enables chemical trace evidence to contribute timely support to investigations. The findings of this survey study contradict prevailing perceptions that the contribution of chemical trace evidence is limited to the presentation of evidence in court.

The impact of chemical trace evidence on justice outcomes: Exploring the additive value of forensic science disciplines.

The focus of this research was to examine the contribution chemical trace evidence makes to criminal justice outcomes. The aim of this work was to place the discipline of chemical trace evidence under the spotlight as there is a dearth of robust research on the impact of this discipline. In this study, data relating to the forensic examinations in a sample of 238 cases which included chemical trace evidence, was collated with data from police investigations and court processes. The findings show that chemical trace evidence is frequently used in combination with other forensic disciplines to support the progress of high-level criminal cases through the justice system. Due to characteristics of how the criminal cases in the dataset were investigated and prosecuted, in combination with the methodology applied in this study, the impact of forensic evidence on the decision to charge suspects could not be analysed quantitatively. However, the impact of forensic evidence on court outcomes in the sample of cases was analysed using methodology that considered the results of the examinations, and the ability of the evidence to provide support for the inclusion or exclusion of persons of interest. The possibility of chemical trace evidence having impact when applied in combination with other forensic disciplines was also examined. It was found that biological examination results was a significant standalone predictor of court outcomes. In contrast, chemical trace examinations did not predict court outcomes when considered as a standalone predictor but examination results of chemical trace evidence in combination with ballistics/tool marks was significantly associated with court outcomes. The findings of this research indicate that, to assess the full impact of any discipline of forensic evidence on the criminal justice system, the analysis must take into account the potential for important synergies that may exist with other forensic and non-forensic evidence.