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NEW SERIES RELEASED! IN FOCUS: CRIME AND JUSTICE STATISTICS (cat. no. 4524.0)

First release: ‘Youth victimisation and offending: A statistical snapshot,’ September 2011

Second release: ‘In the eye of the beholder: Perceptions of social disorder in Australia,’ December 2011.

In Focus: Crime and Justice Statistics (cat. no. 4524.0) is a new statistical product that was launched in 2011, with the aim of providing a greater depth of analytical insight into crime and justice data collected by the ABS through a series of feature articles focused around particular themes or topical issues.

The first in the series of articles, ‘Youth victimisation and offending: A statistical snapshot,’ collated the findings of various ABS statistical collections in order to provide a comprehensive overview of youth involvement in crime, both as offenders and victims. By drawing on various ABS crime and justice publications, the article highlighted, amongst other findings, higher victimisation and offending rates for youth, and the over-representation of the youth population as both victims and perpetrators of selected personal crimes. For example, the proportion of total offenders who were aged between 10 and 24 in 2009-10 was 48.5%; however, the proportion of the general population who were aged between 10 and 24 in Australia as at December 2009 was 23.5%.

RECORDED CRIME OFFENDER POPULATION COMPARED WITH ESTIMATED RESIDENTIAL POPULATION (ERP), 2009-10

Source: ABS Recorded Crime – Offenders, 2009-10 (cat. no. 4519.0)
Source: Australian Demographic Statistics, December quarter, 2009 (cat. no. 3101.0)

The second article in the series, ‘In the eye of the beholder: Perceptions of social disorder in Australia,’ explored differences in perceptions of social disorder across different demographic groups, and the relationship between experiences of crime victimisation and perceptions of social disorder. The article sheds light on the significant differences in the way that different demographic groups perceive social disorder issues in their local area, and the positive correlation between experiences of crime victimisation and an increased likelihood of perceiving social disorder issues. For example, 81.3% of victims of selected personal crimes perceived at least one social disorder issue in their local area, compared to 59.6% of persons who did not report experiencing an incident of personal crime victimisation.

PROPORTION OF RESPONDENTS IDENTIFYING EACH SOCIAL DISORDER ISSUE by PERSONAL CRIME VICTIMISATION(a)(b)