The criminal justice system comprises 3 parts, the police (investigative element), courts (adjudicative element) and correctional services (corrective element). Information on alcohol and other drug use from each section of the criminal justice system is presented below.
Police
Illicit drug offences (77,074 offenders) and acts intended to cause injury (78,530 offenders) represented the most common principal offences nationally in 2018–19. The number of illicit drug offenders decreased by 1% (710 offenders) between 2017–18 and 2018–19 (ABS 2020b). The majority (68%) of illicit drug offenders were charged with the principal offence of possess and/or use illicit drugs (ABS 2020b).
Courts
Data from Criminal Courts, Australia for 2018–19 showed that offences for most defendants are finalised in the magistrate’s courts (91.4% or 526,716 defendants) and of these:
- Illicit drug offences accounted for 10.7% (or 56,500 defendants), of which 63.4% (35,809 defendants) were possess and/or use illicit drugs. Males accounted for 74.9% (42,326) of defendants with a primary offence of illicit drugs finalised in the Magistrates’ Courts.
- Of defendants proven guilty in the magistrates court for a principal offence of illicit drug offences, 7.1% were given a custodial sentence, but the majority (60.6% or 29,519 defendants) were sentenced to fines (ABS 2020a) (Table S3.55).
- Between 2016–17 and 2017–18, illicit drug offences decreased by 3.4% (1,976), the first decrease since 2010–11. In 2018–19, illicit drug offences decreased further by 0.2% (138). Some of the decrease may be the result of ‘lower level’ offences (such as minor drug possession) being diverted from the courts (ABS 2020a).
Corrective services
A snapshot of the adult (aged 18 and over) prison population at 30 June 2019 showed that there were 43,028 prisoners in Australia. This represents 219 prisoners per 100,000 population and is a 1% decrease from 2018 (ABS 2019).
Young people under youth justice supervision
On an average day in 2018–19, 5,694 young people aged 10 and over were under youth justice supervision. Most (4,767 or 84%) young people under supervision were supervised in the community, and almost 1 in 5 (17% or 956) were in detention (some were supervised in both the community and detention on the same day). A total of 10,820 young people were supervised at some time during the year (AIHW 2020c).
Young people aged 10–17 under youth justice supervision, from 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2016, were 30 times as likely as the Australian population of the same age to receive an alcohol and other drug treatment service (AIHW 2018).
The National Tobacco Strategy 2012–2018 recognises that prisoners have some of the highest levels of smoking and that smoking is common among groups that are often over-represented in the prison population (IGCD 2012). Recently, there have been a range of smoking bans introduced in Australian prisons and most correctional facilities are now smoke-free (DoH 2016).
Data from the National Prisoner Health Data Collection (NPHDC) showed that rates of smoking among prisoners is substantially higher than in the general community. In 2018:
- About three-quarters (75%) of prison entrants currently smoked tobacco.
- Tasmania had the highest proportion of current smokers (90%), followed by South Australia (83%). Queensland (68%) had the lowest proportion.
- More than two-thirds (67%) of prison entrants smoked tobacco daily (Figure CRIM1).
- The average age a prisoner smoked their first full cigarette was 14.1 years (AIHW 2019).
In the general population, findings from the 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) showed that of people aged 14 and over:
- 11.0% smoked on a daily basis
- 14.0% were current smokers
- the average age of their first full cigarette was 16.6 years (AIHW 2020b).