This document was added or updated on 16/09/2020.

Extended time series

Recorded Crime – Victims data was first published in 1993 and has since been released annually. Data for the years 1993 to 2009 have, until this point, only been accessible separately through the earlier publications.

A number of factors influence the comparability of the data over time and need to be considered when looking at the trends in recorded crime. These can include changes in:

• standards, classifications or counting rules developed nationally
• new technologies or police business practices and resources
• legislation

For the 2010 publication, changes to the basis of the collection were officially implemented and an expected break in series was noted. As such, subsequent releases only contained data from 2010 onwards. However, recent analysis indicates that there was not a large impact on the data at that timepoint and instead there were smaller, incremental changes to the data over time.

Data has now been compiled for all available years to produce a set of tables containing statistics on victims of crime by selected offences as recorded by police from 1993 to 2019 (where available). This data is intended to support analysis of the whole time series available, however, there are a number of changes to the data over time which have been highlighted in these notes. For further information about the Recorded Crime – Victims data refer to the general methodology notes as well as previous issues of this publication for information about specific years.

In compiling data over such a long time period, some small adjustments were made to the data to ensure, for example, uniform confidentiality methods were applied across the datasets and offence inclusions were the same across the data sets. As such, there may be small differences to data presented in this publication and those published in previous issues.


Offence scope changes

The offence categories are presented in the extended time series data as per the scope of the current publication.

Some offence data are not available for 1993 and 1994 as a staged approach was used to set up the original data collection. Data was collected from 1995 for:

• Assault
• Further detail for unlawful entry with intent with subcategories of ‘property – stolen’ and ‘property – other’
• Other theft

Driving causing death has been excluded from homicide and related offences in this publication. This offence was included in previous issues of this publication prior to the 2007 period but was removed as not all jurisdictions were able to provide the data.


Offence classification changes

Four classifications have been used to categorise offence data over time:

• 1993-1998: Australian National Classification of Offences 1985
• 1999-2008: Australian Standard Offence Classification 1997
• 2009: Australian Standard Offence Classification (Second edition) 2008
• 2010-2019: Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification 2011

Changes to the offence classifications generally had minimal impact on the offence data comparability. Some jurisdictions also used the opportunity of implementing updated coding classifications to review the offence coding rather than just transferring to the new classification, resulting in changes that may have impacted on comparability to earlier data.


Recording and reporting rule changes

A set of definitions and counting rules for crimes recorded by police were implemented from the start of the recorded crime data collection.

A project was undertaken to investigate if there were underlying differences between state and territory data with results released in June 2005. The key findings of the project were:

• Some jurisdictions almost always recorded a reported criminal incident on their crime recording system, whereas other jurisdictions applied a form of threshold test prior to a record being made. Those threshold tests varied across jurisdictions and were not guided by national standards.
• Evidence suggested that variation in the decision to record a crime was significant for assault and sexual assault. Variation in the recording of property related offences did not appear to be as significant.
• Once a crime has been recorded in the system, there was no evidence to suggest that processes within any state or territory had a significant impact on differences in the recorded statistics.

From this project a National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced to address the lack of a uniform standard in the initial police recording processes. Given that law enforcement is administered separately by each of the state and territory police agencies in Australia, the date of implementing this standard varied but mainly occurred between 2007 and 2009.

One of the key changes to the data as a result of the implementation of the NCRS was the removal of data classified as ‘no crime’ from 2009 onwards. The removal of this category did not impact the data for Queensland or the Northern Territory. Queensland data was not impacted as that outcome was not included in prior years. Due to system issues, data for the Northern Territory continues to include this outcome. Analysis of the national data found that the difference between the published change and the actual change was small for most offence types, with nearly all movements in the same direction and of similar magnitude. Differences were more marked for some individual states and territories.

The first year of data available after the full implementation of the NCRS was 2010. However, the interpretation and implementation of the recording rule for assault incidents varied from the standard for Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. Due to this variation assault data are not published for those jurisdictions for most years and subsequently national data is also not available. This issue was resolved for Tasmania with data available from 2014.

The recording and reporting rule differences between jurisdictions prior to the introduction of the NCRS, as well as the move to the NCRS and ongoing differences noted, should be considered when analysing the data over the extended time series.


Data comparability by offence

The following notes highlight specific information that effects the data by offence type.

Assault

Data for assault was introduced in 1995.

Data prior to 2010 was not recorded consistently across the states and territories for assault offences. This was partially resolved from 2010 onwards with the implementation of the National Crime Recording Standard.

The interpretation and implementation of the recording rule for assault incidents continues to vary from the standard for Victoria and Queensland. The variation is particularly around whether an element of investigation occurs before deciding to record an incident on their crime recording system. Due to this variation, assault data are not published for these jurisdictions and subsequently national data is also not available. Tasmanian data are not published for the years 2010 to 2014 due to this variation, but this was resolved for 2015 onwards.

Assault data for the Australian Capital Territory for 1995 was not suitable for publication so the time series commenced in 1996.

Sexual assault

Data prior to 2010 was not recorded consistently across the states and territories for sexual assault offences. This was resolved from 2010 onwards with the implementation of the National Crime Recording Standard.

Kidnapping/abduction

Counts of kidnapping/abduction may be slightly overstated for NSW. 'Deprivation of liberty' (which is out of scope for this collection) is not separately identifiable on the NSW Police recording system; therefore, counts of this offence type are also included in the kidnapping/abduction offence category.

Unlawful entry with intent

Further detail for unlawful entry with intent was introduced in 1995 with the added subcategories of ‘property – stolen’ and ‘property – other’.

Unlawful entry with intent subcategories are not available in 2000 for Queensland and South Australia, subsequently national data is also not available.

Other theft

Data for other theft was introduced in 1995.