Armed robbery in Australia : 2004 National Armed Robbery Monitoring Program annual report

Maria Borzycki
ISBN 1 921185 03 1 ; ISSN 1326-6004
Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2006
(Research and public policy series, no. 69)

Foreword

Armed robbery affects both individuals and property, and the threatened or actual violence associated with it can leave victims with lasting psychological trauma. The development of strategies to reduce the incidence of armed robbery relies on the collection and use of data to identify and monitor its changing trends. The National Armed Robbery Monitoring Program (NARMP) began such a collection in 2003, with the commitment of police forces in all Australian jurisdictions and the aim of providing insight into the factors driving trends in armed robbery. This report uses information drawn from the second year of information collection and analysis, 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2004.

The 2004 report shows an overall decrease in the number of armed robberies, but pays particular attention to a perceived increase in the number of armed robberies targeting licensed premises such as clubs and hotels. In only its second year of reporting, the NARMP has not yet gathered sufficient data to determine whether the trend of targeting licensed premises is anything more than perception, or whether the reported incidents conform to a particular pattern. Importantly the data suggest that armed robberies in clubs and hotels have different characteristics from other types of armed robberies. Most noticeably they are more likely to involve older offenders in groups with firearms, often handguns, in the early hours of the morning.

This report builds on information gathered as part of the NARMP since 2003, and continues the work done by the Australian Institute of Criminology and other organisations in tracking patterns in armed robbery. It shows a slight drop in the number of offences involving firearms from those reported in the 2003 NARMP annual report and in Crime facts info no. 95: Weapon use in armed robbery, along with a drop in the Other weapons category and a rise in offences committed using knives and syringes.

An important change in the information gathered by the 2004 report from that in the 2003 report is that the dataset is now incident-based rather than victim-based. Additional detail has also been collected, including more comprehensive information for existing variables. Because of these changes it has taken some time to compile this new and more detailed dataset. With continued monitoring and improvements in data quality, the value of the NARMP will be more evident as the collection grows. The Institute thanks the police forces in each jurisdiction for continued commitment to the program. It is hoped that the collection will ultimately provide the sort of detailed findings that have emerged from the National Homicide Monitoring Program which began in 1990 and is highly regarded by homicide squads across Australia.

Toni Makkai
Director
Australian Institute of Criminology