QUALITY DECLARATION

INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

In November 1990, an Inter-Governmental Agreement was made between the Commonwealth and the states and territories concerning the establishment of the National Crime Statistics Unit as a National Common Police Service, with a role to initiate, coordinate and oversee the development and production of national uniform crime statistics. The statistics contained in this publication are derived from administrative systems maintained by the state and territory police.


RELEVANCE

Recorded Crime – Victims, Australia (cat. no. 4510.0) presents national crime statistics relating to victims of a selected range of offences that have been recorded by police during the period 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017.

This publication is the eighth year in the current time series, Recorded Crime – Victims, Australia, 2010 reflects a break in series for the collection. It is advised that comparisons should not be made to data published prior to this period.

The scope of this collection includes victims of attempted and completed offences classified to divisions and/or subdivisions of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (ANZSOC). Depending on the type of offence, a victim can be a person, a premise, an organisation or a motor vehicle. Selected offences include:

• Homicide and related offences (including murder, attempted murder and manslaughter)
• Assault
• Sexual assault
• Kidnapping/abduction
• Robbery
• Blackmail/extortion
• Unlawful entry with intent
• Motor vehicle theft
• Other theft

Outputs include:

• victim counts for selected offences (for Australia and states/territories)
• victim characteristics (age of victim, sex of victim) for offences where the victim is a person
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status and the relationship of offender to victim, where the victim is a person, for selected states/territories
• type of location where the criminal incident occurred
• use of weapon in the commission of the offence
• victim counts for selected offences by outcome of investigation at 30 days

National data are available for all offences excluding Assault. Assault data are available for the following jurisdictions: New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory.


TIMELINESS

The Recorded Crime – Victims collection is conducted annually for a selected range of offences recorded by police during the reference period of 1 January to 31 December. Information from the collection is generally released within six months of the reference period.


ACCURACY

The collection has been designed to facilitate comparisons of states and territories through the application of national statistical standards and counting rules. However, some legislative and processing differences remain which may include different recording practices, legislation or policy across the various jurisdictions, including pro-active policing campaigns to encourage reporting by the public.

The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was developed in collaboration with police agencies across Australia as a result of findings from the Differences in Recorded Crime Statistics Project. It was designed to guide the recording and counting of criminal incidents for statistical purposes and address a lack of uniform practices in initial police recording processes.

In evaluating the implementation of the NCRS and possible statistical impacts in Recorded Crime – Victims, the ABS compared these data with state and territory data obtained from Crime Victimisation, Australia (cat. no. 4530.0). It was observed that assault data provided by police may have residual differences between jurisdictions that affect comparability. As a result, assault data will only be available for those jurisdictions complying with the NCRS: New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory.

For national estimates of assault data the ABS recommends that Crime Victimisation, Australia is used. These data are collected in a uniform way across jurisdictions, and provides comparable data for all states and territories.


COHERENCE

The NCRS has been developed to address the lack of uniformity in initial police recording processes across jurisdictions. This standard complements the already established classifications and counting rules for the Recorded Crime – Victims publication.

Offences for the 2017 reference period are classified in accordance with the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification and a set of national counting rules to establish the number of victims. Due to differing scope and counting rules, the data in the Recorded Crime – Victims may not be comparable to data published in other national and state/territory publications.


INTERPRETABILITY

Recorded Crime – Victims contains detailed Explanatory Notes, Appendices and a Glossary which detail the counting rules, terminology, classifications and other technical aspects associated with these statistics.


ACCESSIBILITY

If the information you require is not available from the publication or the data cubes included with in the publication, then the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics may be able to help you with a customised service to suit your needs. Email: <crime.justice@abs.gov.au>.