Red Letters and Where They Are Going

Border intervention is a key element in Australia's biosecurity strategy. Mail articles are inspected, and those that are intercepted with biosecurity risk material are recorded, including the address to which the article was to be delivered. We used geo-location software to identify the delivery address of mail articles intercepted with biosecurity risk material from 2008-2011. We matched these addresses with demographic data that were recorded at a regional level from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011 Census. We used random forest statistical analyses to try to correlate various demographic variables at the regional level with the counts of seized mail articles. The analysis of the seizure counts against demographic characteristics suggests a high correlation between having higher numbers of university students that speak language A at home and containing the destination addresses for higher quantities of intercepted mail articles. This statistical pattern can be used to inform policy actions to try to reduce the rate at which mail articles that contain biosecurity risk material are sent to Australia.