Crime and Safety, South Australia

NAME OF ORGANISATION
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

OVERVIEW

Survey of South Australian residents about household and personal crime and safety issues. Issues covered include house break-ins and attempted break-ins, motor vehicle theft, robbery, assault, whether crimes reported to police, relationship to offender and perception of crime and public nuisance.

PURPOSE

To obtain information on the perception of crime problems in the neighbourhood, the incidence of selected categories of crime and reporting behaviour from persons aged 15 years and over.

SCOPE

Households and persons living in SA in private dwellings except:

1. members of the permanent defence forces;
2. certain diplomatic personnel of overseas governments, customarily excluded from census and estimated populations;
3. overseas residents in Australia; and
4. members of non-Australian defence forces (and their dependants) stationed in Australia.
   

As per the Monthly Population Survey, coverage rules are applied which aim to ensure that each person/household is associated with only one dwelling, and hence has only one chance of selection. The chance of a person/household being enumerated at two separate dwellings in the one survey is considered to be negligible.

Persons/households who are away from their usual residence for six weeks or less at the time of interview are enumerated at their usual residence (relevant information may be obtained from other usual residents present at the time of the survey).

DATA DETAIL

Conceptual framework

Information was collected from households and persons living in private dwellings throughout SA. Information collected includes:

• View of crime problems in the neighbourhood
• Dwelling type, length of residency, and nature of occupancy
• Number and types of offences relating to:
  • home break-ins (actual and/or attempted)
  • motor vehicle thefts
  • robbery
  • assault
• For home break-ins: presence of home security measures such as security screen doors, deadlocks, and burglar alarms; and security measures added in the last 12 months
• Number of incidents in the last 12 months involving the respondent, and number reported to police
• Main reason for unreported incidents
• For selected offences, for example robbery and assault:
  • location of last incident, nature of incident, number of assailants, use of a weapon by assailants, and occurrence of physical injury
  • whether accompanied by anyone when incident occurred, whether told anyone else, and knowledge of assailants
• For the most recent incident, a brief description of what occurred (for each type of offence).

Survey results are published in the following publications:

• Crime and Safety, Australia (ABS Cat no. 4509.0)
• Crime and Safety, Australia: Supplementary National and Standard Tables (ABS Cat no. 4509.0.40.001)
• Crime and Safety, South Australia (ABS Cat no. 4509.4)

Tables are available on request as a specila data service:

• Victims/non-victims by type of offence/household security measures/region/labour force status/age/sex
• Victims: type of offence by number of incidences/whether informed police/main reason for not telling police(break-in)/household characteristics(break-in and attempted break-in)/whether offender known(assault)
• Sex by perception of crime/nuisance problems in neighbourhood

Standard labour force classifications used where possible.

For the offence classifications attempts were made to align the classifications as closely as possible with police classifications and the ABS' Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC). However, it should be emphasised that the responses obtained in this survey are based on respondent's perception of their having been a victim of an offence. The terms used summarise the wording of the questions asked of the respondent and may not necessarily correspond with the legal of police definitions which are used for each offence.

Other concepts (summary)
Not applicable

GEOGRAPHIC DETAIL
South Australia

Comments and/or Other Regions

Data is not available for small areas.

COLLECTION FREQUENCY
Adhoc

Frequency comments

Ad hoc - but is conducted nationally on about a 3 yearly basis. Has been conducted specifically for SA in April 1991, April 1995 and October 2000.

COLLECTION HISTORY

This survey is conducted on an ad hoc basis. It has been conducted nationally in 1993 and 1998, and in SA in 1991, 1995 and 2000.

DATA AVAILABILITY
Yes

Data availability comments