A NOTE ON STATISTICS USED IN THIS REPORT
This reporting period is the second period in which the case management system of the Office, known as CASES, has been in operation. The installation of CASES has led to numerous changes in procedure within the Office, and has had a particular impact upon how statistics are recorded.
Prior to CASES, the statistics used in DPP Annual Reports were in the main provided by the courts. Those statistics were generally based on individual charges, rather than on defendants.
However, most of the statistics used in this report are generated from CASES. These new statistics comply with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) standards for the characteristics of defendants dealt with by criminal courts (see ABS 4513.0). A fundamental aspect that is different is that the ABS standard reports against defendants rather than charges.
As ABS 4513.0 (Criminal Courts Australia) at para 20 puts it: “the principal counting unit for the Criminal Courts collection is a defendant. A defendant is a person or organisation against whom one or more criminal charges have been laid and which are heard together as the one unit of work by a court at a particular level.”
Generally, matters reported are those finalised within the reporting period. As set out in ABS 4513.0 at para 24 and following, “finalisation” describes how a criminal charge is concluded. Matters are concluded as set out in Paragraphs 30, 31 and 32 depending on the court involved. Of particular note, a transfer to another court level (for example a committal either for trial or sentence) concludes the matter in one court level and initials it in another court level.
All offences in CASES are classified against the Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC). The ABS has formulated ASOC to provide uniform national statistics. The sixteen divisions within the ASOC are set out ABS 1234.0. Where tables refer to matters being “disaggregated by matter type”, this is a reference to the ASOC divisions.
TABLE 1: TOTAL MATTERS FINALISED BY JURISDICTION
| Description |
Matters |
Proved |
| Children's Court |
454 |
344 |
| Magistrates Court |
4237 |
3144 |
| Supreme Court |
315 |
196 |
| Court of Appeal |
18 |
|
| Total |
5024 |
3684 |
ANNUAL REPORT 2011-12 DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS 35
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