Statistics

A note on statistics used in this report

This reporting period is the third period in which the case management system of the Office, known as CASES, has been in operation. 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 mainly provided by the courts, and 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 28 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.”

Because a different system is used by ACT Courts, there is potential for a divergence between statistics produced by this Office and those produced by the courts. In particular, if charges were finalised at different court appearances in the same case for a defendant and these were counted as finalised at each appearance rather than being aggregated as a single finalised defendant, there would be a greater number of matters recorded. This would particularly affect matter shown as discontinued by the prosecution. For example, often “back up” charges are discontinued at a particular appearance, but other charges against the same defendant that are part of the same unit of work continue on another day. If ABS rules are followed, the “back up” charges would not be counted as finalised separately. If they were incorrectly counted as having been finalised, then it would appear that more matters were discontinued than was in fact the case.

As the Office becomes more familiar with the CASES system, more rigorous treatment of finalised matters is applied. This has resulted in more frequent “merging” of matters more properly to reflect the fact that a group of charges has been heard together as one unit of work. This more rigorous approach has resulted in fewer matters being recorded as finalised in the reporting period than would have been yielded by the approach in previous years. Some caution is therefore required in comparing the figures in this report to those in previous years.

Generally, matters reported are those finalised within the reporting period. As set out in ABS 4513 “finalisation” describes how a criminal charge is concluded. Matters are concluded as set out in paragraphs 30 - 38 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 in ABS 1234.0. Where tables refer to matters being “disaggregated by matter type”, this is a reference to the ASOC divisions.