Australian Institue of Criminology

Skip to content

Crime victimisation in two selected migrant communities

Crime facts info no. 107

ISSN 1445-7288
Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, September 2005

Managed by the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Australian component of the 2004 International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) randomly surveyed 6,000 people aged 16 or older. To assess the experience of crime among migrants, an extra 1001 individuals born, or whose parents were born, in Vietnam or the Middle East were surveyed. The chart below compares the five-year rates of victimisation for the main sample and the Middle Eastern/Vietnamese sample. It shows that in the previous five years, respondents from the migrant sample were significantly less likely to experience being victims of personal crime, including assault, robbery and personal theft, than those in the main community sample. During the same five-year period, the migrant and main samples experienced similar levels of total household crime, although those in the migrant sample were significantly more likely to be victims of motor vehicle theft. In contrast to actual rates of victimisation, fear of crime was significantly higher among the migrant sample than among the main community sample (see Johnson 2005).

Victimisation rates in the previous five years (per cent)

Chart

NOTE: Due to multiple victimisation across offence categories, the sum of individual offence categories exceeds total crime victimisation figures.

SOURCE: Australian Institute of Criminology. International Crime Victimisation Survey, 2004 [computer file]

Reference