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NOTES

ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION

This publication presents national crime statistics relating to victims of a selected range of offences that have been recorded by police. These statistics provide indicators of the level and nature of recorded crime victimisation in Australia and a basis for measuring change over time.


DATA CONSISTENCY

The statistics are derived from administrative systems maintained by state and territory police. Although national standards and classifications are used in the compilation of these statistics, some discrepancies remain between the states and territories. These are due to legislative and procedural differences between police jurisdictions. As part of its National Crime Statistics Quality Assurance Strategy, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is working with police agencies to minimise the effect of these differences.


INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS

Differences over time in the level of recorded crime may reflect factors other than change in the incidence of crime. For example, as police implement changes to their recording practices and systems the information they record may be affected. Also, when police form special task forces to combat particular offences or implement campaigns to encourage reporting there may be effects on the level of victimisation recorded in the period. People's willingness to report crime may also change for other reasons. Refer to paragraphs 2 and 3, and 37 and 48 of the Explanatory Notes for further detail.


CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

The tables with state and territory data on relationship of offender to victim (previously tables 4, 5 and 6) have been replaced with table 4. This provides national data for relationship of offender to victim, for the offence categories of murder, attempted murder, assault, sexual assault, kidnapping/abduction and blackmail/extortion.


FURTHER INFORMATION

More information about ABS activities in the field of crime and justice statistics is available from the Crime and Justice theme page on the ABS web site. To access the theme page, select Themes from the menu on the home page. Details of other ABS publications relating to crime and justice statistics can be found in paragraph 47 of the Explanatory Notes.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The ABS acknowledges the valuable contribution of the Board of Management of the National Crime Statistics Unit, the National Crime Statistics Advisory Group and the staff of the various agencies that provide the statistics that are presented in this publication.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Nick Skondreas on Melbourne 03 9615 7381.


SUMMARY OF FINDINGS


INTRODUCTION

This publication presents statistics on victims of a selected range of offences which were recorded by state and territory police in Australia for the period 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2003. Data are also provided for individual years from 1994 onwards. While the statistics provide a measure of the level and nature of crime in Australia, users are referred to the Explanatory Notes for more detail on the exact scope and coverage of the Recorded Crime Victims Statistics collection and the counting rules applied.

As the collection is based on information that was recorded by police, it is important to note that the statistics include records of alleged offences which may later be withdrawn or proven to have no basis. Also, many incidents are not reported to police, with victims of personal crimes, such as assault and sexual assault, much less likely to report the offence to police than victims of property crimes.

Depending on the type of offence, a victim may be a person, a premise, an organisation or a motor vehicle. It is also possible that where one person was the subject of two or more offences during the one criminal incident (e.g. they were abducted and sexually assaulted) they would be counted as a victim of each offence (e.g. a victim of kidnapping/abduction and a victim of sexual assault). For these reasons, it is not meaningful to aggregate the number of victims across each offence type and produce a 'total number of victims'; it is only meaningful to look at victim counts within each offence category.


NATIONAL CRIME LEVELS

Overall the number of victims recorded by Australian police declined in most offence categories in 2003. This was particularly the case for offences involving the taking of property. Motor vehicle theft decreased by 13% and unlawful entry with intent decreased by 10%. Victims of robbery fell by 6%, with armed robbery falling by 9% and unarmed robbery by 5%. Other offence categories to record a decrease included other theft (6%), homicide and related offences (4%) and assault (1%).

VICTIMS(a), Change in number - 2002 to 2003

VICTIMS(a), Offence categories by sex

VICTIMS(a), Offence categories by age group

VICTIMS(a), Offences occurring at residential and community locations

VICTIMS(a), Outcome of investigation at 30 days

VICTIMS(a), Weapon used in commission of offence

VICTIMS(a), Firearm used in commission of offence

• Unlawful entry with intent victimisation rates decreased in every state and territory between 2002 and 2003. The states and territories to record the largest decreases included the Northern Territory (26%) and Victoria (16%).

• Most states and territories recorded a decrease in victimisation rates for motor vehicle theft between 2002 and 2003. The largest decreases were recorded in Victoria (19%) and New South Wales (17%). The Australian Capital Territory recorded a substantial increase of 24%.
  
• The victimisation rate for robbery decreased in all but two states and territories between 2002 and 2003. The largest decreases were in South Australia (19%), Northern Territory (16%) and Victoria (11%). The only states to record increases were Queensland and Western Australia, where the robbery victimisation rates increased by 4% for both states.
  
• The victimisation rate for assault in 2003 decreased for all states and territories except Northern Territory and Tasmania. Northern Territory recorded an increase of 7% to 1,874 per 100,000 population and Tasmania recorded an increase of 2% to 785 per 100,000 population.
  
• The Australian Capital Territory recorded the largest decrease in sexual assault victimisation rate at 32%, followed by Western Australia which recorded a 23% decrease. In contrast, South Australia recorded the largest increase in the sexual assault victimisation rate in 2003 at 13%.

		NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT	Aust.
NUMBER
Homicide and related offences		356	171	231	79	64	11	18	8	938
	Murder	102	71	65	19	26	4	11	4	302
	Attempted murder	121	51	116	40	16	6	–	2	352
	Manslaughter	11	5	5	1	9	–	7	1	39
	Driving causing death	122	44	45	19	13	1	–	1	245
Assault		79 892	17 140	21 140	16 006	15 056	3 745	3 664	1 986	158 629
Sexual assault		6 796	2 565	5 069	1 852	1 268	257	303	127	18 237
Kidnapping/abduction		423	93	125	34	34	2	2	3	716
Robbery		10 847	2 875	2 177	1 321	2 081	135	83	200	19 719
	Armed Robbery	3 318	1 404	966	530	776	72	29	67	7 162
	Unarmed Robbery	7 529	1 471	1 211	791	1 305	63	54	133	12 557
Blackmail/extortion		80	108	71	61	45	4	–	1	370
Unlawful entry with intent		128 488	60 612	63 148	28 513	56 611	6 554	4 204	5 289	353 419
	UEWI-Involving the taking of property	98 791	45 848	47 571	18 379	38 064	5 156	2 601	4 620	261 030
	UEWI-Other	29 697	14 764	15 577	10 134	18 547	1 398	1 603	669	92 389
Motor vehicle theft		34 824	23 823	13 930	10 206	10 628	2 150	702	2 550	98 813
Other theft		194 006	136 417	113 997	73 759	91 138	12 064	6 717	10 870	638 968
RATE PER 100,000 PERSONS
Homicide and related offences		5.3	3.5	6.1	5.2	3.3	2.3	9.1	np	4.7
	Murder	1.5	1.4	1.7	1.2	1.3	np	5.5	np	1.5
	Attempted murder	1.8	1.0	3.1	2.6	0.8	np	–	np	1.8
	Manslaughter	0.2	np	np	np	np	–	np	np	0.2
	Driving causing death	1.8	0.9	1.2	1.2	0.7	np	–	np	1.2
Assault		1 194.8	348.6	556.8	1 047.9	771.2	785.0	1 847.2	615.1	798.0
Sexual assault		101.6	52.2	133.5	121.3	64.9	53.9	152.8	39.3	91.7
Kidnapping/abduction		6.3	1.9	3.3	2.2	1.7	np	np	np	3.6
Robbery		162.2	58.5	57.3	86.5	106.6	28.3	41.8	61.9	99.2
	Armed Robbery	49.6	28.6	25.4	34.7	39.7	15.1	14.6	20.8	36.0
	Unarmed Robbery	112.6	29.9	31.9	51.8	66.8	13.2	27.2	41.2	63.2
Blackmail/extortion		1.2	2.2	1.9	4.0	2.3	np	–	np	1.9
Unlawful entry with intent		1 921.6	1 232.6	1 663.2	1 866.7	2 899.7	1 373.7	2 119.5	1 638.2	1 777.9
	UEWI-Involving the taking of property	1 477.4	932.4	1 252.9	1 203.3	1 949.7	1 080.7	1 311.3	1 431.0	1 313.1
	UEWI-Other	444.1	300.2	410.3	663.5	950.0	293.0	808.2	207.2	464.8
Motor vehicle theft		520.8	484.5	366.9	668.2	544.4	450.6	353.9	789.8	497.1
Other theft		2 901.4	2 774.2	3 002.5	4 829.0	4 668.3	2 528.6	3 386.4	3 366.9	3 214.3
- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells).
np not available for publication but included in totals where applicable, unless otherwise indicated.
(a) The definition of a victim varies according to the category of the offence (see Glossary).

		NSW	Vic.	Qld	SA	WA	Tas.	NT	ACT	Aust.
% CHANGE IN NUMBER (c)
Homicide and related offences		5.3	–6.0	–4.9	–2.5	–28.1	–	–40.0	np	–4.2
	Murder	4.1	6.0	10.2	–34.5	–35.0	np	–26.7	np	–4.7
	Attempted murder	–17.7	–3.8	–9.4	2.6	–20.0	np	np	np	–12.0
	Manslaughter	–15.4	np	np	np	–	–	np	np	–18.8
	Driving causing death	52.5	–22.8	18.4	46.2	–43.5	np	–	np	14.5
Assault		–0.2	–6.6	1.4	–3.2	–1.5	2.8	6.8	–0.1	–0.9
Sexual assault		4.9	–4.6	5.7	14.0	–21.7	2.8	–8.5	–31.4	1.5
Kidnapping/abduction		–3.0	–12.3	66.7	9.7	–5.6	np	np	np	1.4
Robbery		–7.3	–10.2	6.4	–18.6	5.7	–0.7	–16.2	–5.2	–6.1
	Armed Robbery	–13.0	–11.3	9.0	1.7	–14.7	38.5	–21.6	86.1	–8.7
	Unarmed Robbery	–4.6	–9.1	4.4	–28.2	23.2	–25.0	–12.9	–24.0	–4.5
Blackmail/extortion		–2.4	–12.9	24.6	—	45.2	np	np	np	3.9
Unlawful entry with intent		–9.0	–14.8	–7.5	–13.7	–7.9	–11.6	–25.8	–13.6	–10.4
	UEWI-Involving the taking of property	–9.6	–14.5	–7.9	–15.6	–8.7	–11.8	–27.0	–12.5	–10.8
	UEWI-Other	–6.8	–15.9	–6.1	–10.2	–6.2	–10.7	–23.9	–20.4	–9.0
Motor vehicle theft		–16.4	–17.5	–12.1	–9.0	1.3	–13.5	–13.1	24.0	–12.9
Other theft		–8.5	–4.3	–2.6	–6.9	–7.2	–10.9	–17.6	6.5	–6.1
% CHANGE IN RATE PER 100,000 PERSONS (d)
Homicide and related offences		4.5	–7.2	–7.1	–3.0	–29.1	–0.9	–39.9	np	–5.4
	Murder	3.3	4.7	7.7	–34.9	–35.9	np	–26.6	np	–5.9
	Attempted murder	–18.3	–5.0	–11.4	2.0	–21.1	np	np	np	–13.1
	Manslaughter	–16.1	np	np	np	–	–	np	np	–19.7
	Driving causing death	51.3	–23.8	15.7	45.3	–44.3	np	–	np	13.1
Assault		–1.0	–7.8	–0.9	–3.8	–2.9	1.8	7.0	–0.5	–2.1
Sexual assault		4.1	–5.8	3.3	13.3	–22.8	1.8	–8.3	–31.6	0.2
Kidnapping/abduction		–3.7	–13.3	62.9	9.1	–6.9	np	np	np	0.2
Robbery		–8.1	–11.3	4.0	–19.1	4.2	–1.7	–16.0	–5.6	–7.2
	Armed Robbery	–13.7	–12.4	6.6	1.2	–15.9	37.2	–21.5	85.3	–9.8
	Unarmed Robbery	–5.3	–10.2	2.0	–28.6	21.5	–25.7	–12.8	–24.3	–5.7
Blackmail/extortion		–3.2	–14.0	21.8	–0.6	43.1	–	–	–	2.7
Unlawful entry with intent		–9.7	–15.9	–9.6	–14.2	–9.2	–12.4	–25.7	–13.9	–11.5
	UEWI-Involving the taking of property	–10.3	–15.6	–10.0	–16.1	–10.0	–12.6	–26.9	–12.9	–11.9
	UEWI-Other	–7.5	–16.9	–8.3	–10.7	–7.6	–11.6	–23.7	–20.7	–10.1
Motor vehicle theft		–17.1	–18.6	–14.1	–9.5	–0.1	–14.3	–13.0	23.5	–14.0
Other theft		–9.2	–5.5	–4.8	–7.4	–8.6	–11.7	–17.5	6.1	–7.3
- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells). na not available.
np not available for publication but included in totals where applicable, unless otherwise indicated.
(a) The definition of a victim varies according to the category of the offence (see Glossary). (b) Data and ERP for 2002 have been revised (see Explanatory Notes paragraphs 20 and 21). (c) Percentage change figures are subject to rounding. (d) Estimates of percentage change movements are obtained by taking the difference of unrounded rates. The movement is then rounded to one decimal place. Where a discrepancy occurs between the published percentage change and the difference in rounded rates, the published change is more accurate.