Jeanine Baker

Suicide prevention and method restriction: evaluating the impact of limiting access to lethal means among young Australians

Given the finite resources allocated to suicide prevention, it is necessary to direct resources into interventions that are most likely to have an impact. This article tests for possible impacts on youth suicides of a cost-intensive Australian policy change (increased firearms restriction) that limited access to a means of suicide. Suicide rates by different age groups and methods were examined for structural breaks, using Zivot-Andrews and Quandt tests. No breakpoint was found in firearm suicide among Australian youth around the time of the 1996 legislative changes. Method restriction in the form of firearms legislation could not be tied to a corresponding impact on youth suicide.

Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long-Term International Comparisons?

Although firearm homicide remains a topic of interest within criminological and policy discourse, existing research does not generally undertake longitudinal comparisons between countries. However, cross-country comparisons provide insight into whether “local” trends (e.g., declines in firearm homicide in one particular country) differ from broader, international trends. This in turn can improve knowledge about the role of factors such as policing practices and socioeconomic variables in the incidence of lethal violence using firearms. The current study compares long-term firearm homicide trends in three countries with similar social histories but different legislative regimes: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Using negative binomial regression, the study found that the most pronounced decline in firearm homicide over the past two decades occurred in New Zealand. Connections between social disadvantage, policing policy, and violence are discussed.

Lethal and Non-Lethal Violence Against Women in Australia Measurement Challenges, Conceptual Frameworks, and Limitations in Knowledge

Understanding pathways from non-lethal violence to lethal violence between intimate partners is a notable challenge for both policy and practice in partner violence prevention. Of particular interest is whether lethal violence represents an “escalation” of violence from “low” to “high” risk over time, or is best predicted by specific behavioral “typologies” of perpetrators. Testing the “escalation” and “typology” theories is hampered in Australia by limitations in knowledge about non-lethal and lethal violence against women. This article discusses data limitations, measurement problems, and conceptual shortcomings, and suggests approaches to improving evidence quality in the field of violence prevention and risk assessment.

Quantifying homicide trends in Australia: a methodological caution

Reducing the incidence of assault-related deaths remains an ongoing interest for injury prevention practitioners. In Australia, and elsewhere, an area of particular attention has been quantifying the incidence of firearm homicide (and tracking potential method substitution) following legislative change. In Australia, the majority of epidemiological studies in this field rely on Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. However, it has recently been noted by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) that the ABS have been ‘undercounting’ firearm homicides since the year 2004. Specifically “…coding procedures used since 2004 (related to an increase in the number of open coroners cases) have resulted in an under-counting of firearm deaths due to assault (i.e. firearm homicide)”.1ABS data do not take into account coroners cases that were ‘open’ at the time of annual ABS data collation. The ABS under-counting issue has previously been flagged in relation to suicide.2-4Recent cross-checks of ABS suicide data against other sources (for example, the National Coronial Information System)2,3suggest that the actual number of suicides from the early 2000s onwards may be in the order of between 200 and 400 deaths per year higher than ABS data indicate. It has been suggested that at least part of the apparent decline in suicide rates since the mid 1990s may in fact be due to under-counting, rather than representing a ‘real’ decline.2 Discrepancies between actual and recorded numbers of deaths have clear implications for the development of robust, evidence-based injury prevention policy. It is concerning, therefore, that the under-counting issue for suicides also appears to apply to homicide data. This implies that the annual number of firearm and non-firearm homicides may be higher than thought. Given the relatively low number of homicides each year in Australia, a small number of ‘uncounted’ deaths could have substantial impacts on observed homicide rates. This in turn could impact on research findings and the evidence base used to inform policy development. While under-counting is unlikely to seriously affect studies of firearm and non-firearm homicide that use pre-2005 data,5it has potential to significantly alter studies that include data from 2004 onwards. It is recommended that the under-counting issue be investigated as a matter of priority, with ABS data revised as appropriate. In the interim, we suggest extreme caution when examining data on deaths due to assault from 2004 onwards.

WITHDRAWN: Author's response to Chapman and Hayen

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