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Australian Crime : facts and figures 2004

1. Recorded crime

This section presents data on recorded crime as published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for the period 1996 to 2003. Recorded crime is based on crimes reported to or detected by police during the period from 1 January to 31 December each year. A victim can include a person, premises or a motor vehicle.

Recorded crime statistics are used generally as a measure of crime in Australia. A proportion of crime is not reported to police, however, and so is not counted in these statistics. An alternative source of information is crime victimisation surveys which are presented in Chapter 3.

Source: Reference 1

Crimes known to police

Tables 1a and 1b show the number of victims recorded by police between 1996 and 2003 for seven major categories of offences: homicide, assault, sexual assault, robbery, unlawful entry with intent (UEWI), motor vehicle theft (MVT) and other theft. It is estimated that these crimes account for about 60% of all crime recorded by police.

Crime rates

Crime rates are a better comparison for changes over time. They are calculated on the basis of 100,000 persons in the population to account for increases in the population over time.

Violent crime rate

Property crime rate

Property crime comprises unlawful entry with intent, motor vehicle theft and other theft.

Location of crime

The ABS classifies crime locations according to the function of the site where a criminal incident occurred, as follows:

  • residential location (including houses, garages/carports, motels and hostels);
  • community location (including car parks, transport facilities, street/footpaths and schools); and
  • other location (including retail premises, recreational facilities, government offices and warehousing/storage).

Table 2 lists the number of violent offences (homicide, assault, sexual assault and robbery) that occurred within each type of location. Figure 4 shows the proportion of violent offences by the type of location.

Table 3 lists the number of property offences (unlawful entry with intent, motor vehicle theft and other theft) that occurred within each type of location. Figure 5 shows the proportion of property offences by the type of location.