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)

4. Armed robbery offenders

Offender data were available for only 1467 incidents. As already noted, not all armed robberies will result in the apprehension of an offender. In some cases the offender avoids detection, and other robberies may be finalised without any offender being proceeded against. Armed robberies can involve multiple offenders, although as noted elsewhere, not all jurisdictions are able to supply information on multiple offenders, and the NARMP records details of up to only five offenders. This dataset therefore cannot indicate if more than five offenders were involved in an armed robbery incident. The reader should be mindful of these caveats when considering the following analyses.

In order for an offender to successfully complete an armed robbery - to escape with property - he or she must be able to effectively control the robbery situation. Control derives from victim intimidation, which itself can derive from weaponry or from offender numbers. In attempting to intimidate multiple individuals, presumably greater offender numbers and/or more intimidating weapons are required than would be the case with a lone target.

Data hint that compared with lone individuals, multiple individuals are targeted (or at least victimised, when they are in a targeted location) by offender groups. The average robbery of multiple individuals involved 1.9 offenders, whereas those against lone individuals involved, on average, 1.5 offenders and those against lone organisations, 1.3 offenders. The count of offenders involved in the robbery of the various victim types is shown in Table 19. Overall, 70 percent of all incidents for which offender information was available involved only a single offender (n=1031). Around seven in 10 robberies of lone individuals or of single organisations were carried out by a single offender. However, around half the robberies in which multiple individuals were victimised were carried out by more than one armed robber.

Table 19: Number of offenders involved in robberies of different victim types, as a percentage of victim type, 2004

Victim type	Offender count					Total number
	1	2	3	4	5
One individual	69	19	8	2	1	(793)
One organisation	77	16	6	1	<1	(535)
Multiple individuals	49	29	10	9	3	(121)
Multiple organisations	80	20	0	0	0	(5)
One organisation & one individual	60	20	0	20	0	(10)
One organisation & multiple individuals	67	0	33	0	0	(3)
Total %	70	19	7	2	1	(1467)
Note: Excludes records in which offender information was not included. No data were available for the category of multiple organisations plus multiple individual victims hence this has been excluded. Based on offender information for first listed victim in incident. Percentages do not necessarily total 100 because of rounding.
Source: AIC NARMP 2004 [computer file]

Of those robberies with both offender count and most serious weapon information, 55 percent involved knives (either with or without syringes and other weapons), and just under one-fifth involved only other weapons. Similar proportions of weapon use were seen across incidents involving lone offenders and offender pairs, but robberies by groups of three and four offenders showed proportionally greater firearms and other weapons use (see Table 20). Although only a small number of incidents, robberies by offender groups of five appeared different again: six of their 10 robberies involved knives, and less than one in 10 involved a firearm. Among the small number of incidents examined, therefore, there does not appear to be any interpretable association between the size of an offender group and the type of weapons they tend to employ.

Table 20: Number of offenders and weapons involved in robberies, as a percentage of offender count, 2004

Weapon	Offender count					Total %
	1	2	3	4	5
Firearm	14	13	20	20	8	14
Knife	57	53	48	49	62	55
Syringe	8	5	1	0	0	7
Other weapon	17	21	26	31	23	19
Non specific or missing	5	8	5	0	8	5
(Total number)	(1031)	(278)	(110)	(35)	(13)	(1467)
Note: Based on the most serious weapon listed in the derived weapon combination, assuming an order of seriousness of firearm, knife, syringe, and other weapon. Based on offender information for first listed victim in incident and excludes records in which offender information was not included. Percentages do not necessarily total 100 because of rounding.
Source: AIC NARMP 2004 [computer file]

Table 21 details the age and gender of all offenders reported in the NARMP incident file. As with victims, the overwhelming majority of offenders tended to be male (90 percent of offenders with available age and gender information) and young: 94 percent were aged less than 40 years and half were aged 18 to 29 years. The average age across the offenders involved in each of the examined incidents was 24 years, but this average varied with the number of offenders involved and with the location where the robberies occurred (see Table 22). For example, younger offenders tended to operate in larger groups: offenders who robbed on their own were aged 27 years on average, whereas those committing offences in groups of five had an average age of 18 years. On average, older offenders targeted pharmacies and financial locations (mean age=30 years), with younger offenders (mean=20 years) involved in armed robberies in recreational settings.

Table 21: Age and gender of offenders, as a percentage of gender, 2004

Age group	Gender		Total %
	Male	Female
< 15 yrs	6	8	6
15 to 17 yrs	24	18	24
18 to 19 yrs	15	14	15
20 to 24 yrs	21	20	21
25 to 29 yrs	14	17	14
30 to 34 yrs	8	9	8
35 to 39 yrs	6	6	6
40 to 44 yrs	4	4	4
45 to 49 yrs	1	2	1
50 to 54 yrs	< 1	1	1
55 to 59 yrs	< 1	< 1	< 1
60 to 64 yrs	< 1	< 1	< 1
65 yrs & over	< 1	0	< 1
(Total number)	(1909)	(212)	(2121)
Note: Excludes one offender record with missing gender data. Derived from information concerning up to 5 listed offenders, for first listed victim in incident. Percentages do not necessarily total 100 because of rounding.
Source: AIC NARMP 2004 [computer file]

Lastly, offenders tended to co-offend with those similarly aged. Of the 436 incidents involving multiple offenders, 39 percent involved offenders in the same age group (using the age group scheme seen in Table 21)

Table 22: Average offender age in years for each location, by number of offenders involved in incident, 2004

Location	Offender count					Overall
	1	2	3	4	5	Avg	n
Residential	28	26	26	22	17	26	(156)
Recreational	21	19	17	-	18	20	(37)
Transport related	23	20	20	17	-	21	(106)
Open spaces (excluding street & footpath)	26	22	22	-	-	22	(16)
Street & footpath	23	21	19	17	18	21	(280)
Educational, health, religious, justice & other community	23	17	18	-	-	21	(23)
Administrative & professional	31	20	-	-	-	25	(9)
Wholesalers, warehouses, manufacturing & agricultural	23	-	-	-	-	23	(2)
Retail with no further detail	27	22	22	23	20	25	(288)
Banking & financial	32	25	27	-	-	30	(35)
Pharmacies & chemists	32	29	22	-	-	30	(41)
Service stations	28	21	20	21	19	26	(208)
Licensed premises	30	25	23	20	-	27	(66)
Newsagents & post offices(a)	27	23	24	20	-	24	(35)
Corner stores, supermarkets & takeaways(a)	26	22	20	20	17	24	(129)
Unspecified & other	28	22	20	-	-	26	(36)
Average for count	27	22	21	20	18	24	(1467)
(a) These new location categories were subsumed by the Retail with no further detail category in 2003 data.
Note: - indicates no records in subcategory. Average derived from information concerning up to 5 listed offenders, for first listed victim in incident.
Source: AIC NARMP 2004 [computer file]