Crime Point-in-Time Service Updates

The Crime Point-in-Time Service has been updated to include the new amendments contained in the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information) Act 2016 (Act 45 of 2016).

Act 45 of 2016

The purpose of this Act is to amend the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 (ACC Act) in order to merge the CrimTrac Agency into the Australian Crime Commission (ACC).

This Act is intended to implement a decision by the Law, Crime and Community Safety Council on 5 November 2015 that the Commonwealth take steps to implement a merger of the ACC and CrimTrac.

This merger brings together Australia’s national criminal intelligence and information capabilities under one banner. Having a unified resource of this type will enrich our national understanding of criminal activity, including volume crimes (such as domestic violence) and serious and organised crime and terrorism. This will allow police, justice agencies and policy makers at all levels of government to adopt a more effective, efficient and evidence-based response to crime.

Under the proposed merger, CrimTrac will carry its functions over to the ACC (including its function of providing nationally coordinated criminal history checks). The CrimTrac Board of Management and the position of CrimTrac CEO will be abolished. 

The Act comprises two schedules. Schedule 1 makes amendments to the ACC Act. The purpose of the amendments in this schedule is to:

• enable the merged agency to continue to carry out all of CrimTrac’s functions, which are referred to as ‘national policing information functions’ under the merged agency structure
• broaden the remit and functions of the ACC Board
• ensure that states and territories have capacity to retain control over Board decisions should the composition of the ACC Board change over time
• set out the Constitutional basis for the merged agency’s new national policing information functions
• enable the merged agency to charge a fee for goods or services that it provides in the course of performing its national policing information functions, as CrimTrac currently does
• preserve the current CrimTrac funding model, which allows charges for certain services to support the provision of national policing information systems and services to police at no cost to Australian governments
• broaden the types of duties a state or territory law may impose on the merged agency, to include duties relating to the merged agency’s national policing information functions
• place limits on the ACC CEO’s ability to disclose national policing information to non-Board agencies, as currently apply to CrimTrac
• enable the ACC CEO to disclose national coordinated criminal history checks to an accredited agency or the individual that is the subject to the check, and
• continue the National Policing Information Systems and Services Special Account, which is currently established by a Finance Minister determination, in the ACC Act.

Schedule 2 makes consequential amendments to reflect merged agency arrangements— namely that CrimTrac functions will be carried out by the ACC—and also makes transitional arrangements.

The amendments made by Act 45 of 2016 have been updated in the Point-in-Time Crime Service current to 24 May 2016. (NB: Subscription required).

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