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)

Executive summary

Data collection for the National Armed Robbery Monitoring Program (NARMP) began in 2003, following a commitment from all police services in all Australian states and territories to provide information that would permit the detailed, national-level exploration of armed robbery. The program was established to:

• monitor trends in armed robbery, specifically trends in weapon use
• identify changes in trends
• provide insight into the factors underpinning these trends.

This report details findings from analyses of the second year of data collected, on all armed robberies reported from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2004. This report and future publications based on the NARMP will make use of additional information to that employed in the 2003 annual report (Borzycki, Sakurai & Mouzos 2004).

Analyses of the 2004 victim-based NARMP dataset suggest:

• a decrease in the number of armed robbery victims compared with 2003, consistent with other recorded crime data (e.g. ABS 2005)
• knives made up half of the weapons listed as involved in victimisations, and firearms made up a smaller proportion of weapons compared with 2003 armed robberies
• boys and men made up nearly three-quarters of all individuals victimised, and around two-thirds of male victims were aged less than 30 years of age
• organisational victims were most frequently robbed in unspecified retail settings
• the majority of both organisational and individual victims were robbed by lone offenders
• less than 10 percent of victims had any prior relationships with offenders.

Additional data in the 2004 NARMP dataset allowed an examination of armed robbery incidents. Analyses suggest:

• single individual victims were robbed in six of every 10 incidents
• over one-quarter of robberies occurred in the street or in an unspecified retail setting
• sixty percent of robberies occurred overnight (6.00 pm to 6.00 am) and the majority of armed robberies in licensed premises, service stations, and corner stores, takeaways and supermarkets occurred during the night hours. In contrast, most robberies in unspecified retail sites occurred during daylight hours (6.00 am to 6.00 pm)
• over half of all robberies involved a knife (with or without other weapons), 15 percent a firearm, and one in five, some other weapon, but this pattern varied depending on victim type: incidents involving a single organisational victim were subject to a higher proportion of firearm robberies
• over one-third of incidents in which stolen property information was also provided recorded that offenders did not successfully gain any property from the robbery
• cash (with or without other types of property) was taken in over one-fifth of incidents and the most common combination of stolen property was cash and electrical equipment (which includes mobile phones), taken in nine percent of armed robberies
• the average value of property stolen in an incident was $1660, although half of the incidents with property value information netted less than $210 in cash and/or goods
• firearm robbery resulted in the highest average stolen property dollar value
• the highest average value robberies occurred in licensed premises and financial settings
• seventy percent of robberies involved only a single armed robber, although over half of robberies in which multiple individuals were victimised involved more than one offender
• offenders were predominantly male (90%), and the majority, regardless of gender, were aged less than 40 years
• when offenders committed armed robbery in groups, they tended to co-offend with similarly aged peers.

These findings are indicative of broad trends in armed robbery, its victims, and those who commit this crime. However, a lack of equivalence in data coding schemes across jurisdictions, missing data, and other issues mean the trends discussed do not necessarily reflect all armed robberies that occurred in Australia in 2004. Nonetheless, findings from these current analyses are in keeping with conclusions from the 2003 annual report, which suggested that robberies can be seen as either:

• low-yield, unplanned and essentially opportunistic, especially in terms of weapons, as in the majority of street robberies, and in locations such as service stations; or
• high-gain, employing more difficult to obtain weapons, as seen in certain retail sites.

Data from the current analyses also suggest that some residential armed robberies - home invasions - and a small subset of street robberies may fall into the latter category. Armed robberies in licensed premises appear different from robberies in other retail locations. Relative to other armed robberies, incidents in hotels/pubs tend to:

• involve firearms, especially handguns
• involve offender groups rather than lone armed robbers
• be committed by older offenders, and
• take place during the evening/early morning (between 9.00 pm and 6.00 am).

These factors in combination suggest that this location type may be the target of more organised armed robbers who seek high gains and who intimidate their victims through hard to obtain and dangerous weapons like handguns, and through offender numbers. It is unclear if pub robbery is a new phenomenon, or if this location now is simply being targeted by offenders using a more intimidating modus operandi. The accumulation of NARMP data will enable this possibly emerging trend to be monitored, assisting law enforcement and those responsible for security in pubs and other licensed venues to base crime reduction and prevention decisions on evidence.