The operation of criminal courts in Australia

The ABS has just released a publication looking at the operation of criminal courts in Australia for the past financial year. It provides a couple of interesting insights into the current operation of our criminal justice system. The ABS media release focused on the prevalence of drug offences in the higher courts, stating that, "Of the 14,163 people adjudicated in Australia's Higher Courts in 2005-06, 2,405 (17%) were finalised for illicit drug offences. This is a rise of 19% from 2001-02 and 2% from 2004-05". I don't think that's terribly surprising, however, and it certainly not the most interesting trend in the report.

Magistrate's, or in NSW Local, courts are Australia's courts of summary jurisdiction. They try summary (less serious) offences, and in most jurisdictions can try some indictable (serious) offences summarily. Magistrate's courts do not involve a jury — the magistrate makes a finding of guilt on the basis of the evidence presented by a police prosecutor and the defence lawyer, and then hands down a sentence. An indictable offence tried summarily will usually be of a less serious nature than those that appear in higher courts, and will tend to result in a milder sentence.

One of the first things in the report that struck me was the decrease in finalised cases (a finalised case is one which has lead to a finding of guilt or innocence, or a decision is made not to proceed or the case is dismissed) in the higher court and the contrasting increase in finalised cases in the Magistrate's court. I suspect that this is largely due to the trend of indictable matters being tried summarily, but the summary at least doesn't comment on the trend. Interestingly too is that almost half (44%) of cases in Magistrate's courts are vehicle offences. Despite the fact that systems such as the PERIN court have removed many minor traffic offences from the Magistrate's courts (if you pay your fine, you won't be required to step into an actual court to resolve most speeding tickets, for example), the Magistrate's court could almost be called the traffic court. This suggests to me that, in order to streamline the efforts of the Magistrate's courts (which have already seen quite a bit of streamlining through "mention" hearings), the most effective thing would be to actually create a separate traffic court. I haven't heard any murmurs about that happening, however.

Another interesting finding is that almost twice as many females as males appear in Magistrates courts on theft charges (the only category for which women are more common than men). In higher courts the same differential exists, although the discrepancy isn't so large. There isn't any historical data in the report (and I can't be bothered digging any up myself), but I wonder what is driving this trend. Is it simply an artefact of enforcement policy? Enquiring minds would love to know.

Whilst the media likes to play up the inefficiency and inadequacy of the court system, mostly the results are pretty cut-and-dried. Almost everyone is proved guilty (91% in higher courts, 73% in Magistrate's courts). In higher courts, 88 percent of those found guilty were due to a guilty pleas. Again, this is hardly surprising. Prosecuting someone, especially in a higher court, costs a lot of money, and the DPP isn't made of money, so they make a decision to prosecute on the basis of the likelihood of securing a conviction. And these statistics tend to suggest they're pretty good at determining when they're going to be successful. What these figures don't show are the numbers charged by police who are never prosecutes. For most crimes, very few charges will ever result in a prosecution, successful or otherwise.

For the more serious offences in the higher courts, four in five (82%) result in a custodial order, whereas only one in ten (9%) do in the lower courts. But due to the respective size of the "audience" for the different courts, the lower courts contribute four times as many people into the custodial system. Be careful, however, because "custodial order" doesn't mean imprisonment. Suspended sentences are custodial orders (and in fact account for about 25% of all sentences), as are things like periodic detention.

There are probably lots of other fascinating data in the report, but that's about all I can digest over lunch. If you're interested in the workings of the criminal justice system in Australia (and if you live here, you have no excuse not to be interested), it's well worth a bit of a look.