Australian Indigenous Women's Offending Patterns

RB/CIP Number: 19
Download report (pdf 1.02 MB)
Peta MacGillivray and Eileen Baldry

IJC Research Brief 19 provides new insights into Indigenous women’s offending by examining previously unpublished police and court data for the period 2010-2012. While there are differences across the selected Australian jurisdictions, the authors find that the offences that most often appeared in charges, court proceedings and convictions were driving and traffic offences, assault, theft offences and offences against justice procedures. In all the jurisdictions examined, assault along with vehicle and driving offences were the top or second most serious offences with which Indigenous women were charged or proceeded against to court. The paper supports the conclusions of IJC Research Brief 14 that in some jurisdictions Indigenous women are imprisoned on more minor offences including public order offences than their non-Indigenous peers. The paper suggests that programs should aim to prevent Indigenous girls and women from becoming enmeshed in low level offending such as less serious driving offences and shoplifting.