1368.1 - New South Wales Regional Statistics, 2006

ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 30/11/2006 First Issue

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Explanatory Notes Glossary Abbreviations	NSW BUREAU OF CRIME STATISTICS AND RESEARCH, RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS DATABASE INTRODUCTION 1 The Recorded Crime Statistics Database of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) comprises extracts from the NSW Police Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS). The primary purpose of the COPS database is to record all police activities by NSW Police. As a secondary purpose, an extract of the data is used by BOCSAR and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to produce crime statistics for NSW. 2 NSW Police do not have mandatory reporting requirements outside the Annual Reports (Departments) Act 1985. BOCSAR are not subject to any legislative reporting requirements but report crime statistics in accordance with their charter. A copy of their charter can be seen on the BOCSAR web site. An extract of the COPS administrative by-product is used by BOCSAR to produce regular reports and ad-hoc analysis of crime rates and trend statistics. 3 Recorded crime statistics represent criminal incidents reported to police and recorded on the COPS database. The counting units are recorded criminal incidents, (except for murder and manslaughter where the counting units are victims), rather than recorded incidents. COPS data are categorised by date of reporting to police, or date of detection by police, rather than by date of occurrence of the incident. Information recorded in the COPS database is on unique occurrences attended by police or reported to police (referred to as COPS events). Within each unique occurrence, linked information on incident type, persons of interest and victims are also recorded. Note that more than one incident can be included in a single COPS event. Similarly more than one offence can be included in a single incident. 4 In this product, selected data on occurrences is presented: criminal incidents data are reported by offence category number and type of apprehended violence orders (AVOs) granted. SCOPE 5 The COPS database used by NSW Police includes information on all reported criminal incidents, data on police actions, and other occurrences attended by, or reported to, police. The scope of the dataset is police activities, including: all events attended incident of all reported and detected crime all recorded victim records associated with reported and detected personal crime persons of interest involved in all reported and detected crime apprehended violence orders (AVOs) granted and other information used in policing. 6 Excluded from the scope of the COPS database are offences which have no associated action by NSW Police, such as offences against Commonwealth laws processed under Commonwealth jurisdiction. However, if NSW Police were involved in investigating an offence against Commonwealth laws then it would be included in COPS. 7 The COPS data extracted for the BOCSAR Recorded Crime Statistics Database, are verified records of criminal incidents, persons of interest and victims. A verified record is one which has been signed off by the recording officer or supervisor. The selected data on domestic violence which is extracted directly from the COPS database also includes only verified incidents. 8 In this product, the scope of the Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) data is only those AVOs granted in Local Courts for NSW residents. REFERENCE PERIOD 9 Each quarter, BOCSAR receives a one year extract of information from the NSW Police. The reference period for recorded crime and Apprehended Violence Order data presented in this product is the 2005 calendar year based on the latest extract. KEY DATA ITEMS 10 The following key data items are used in this product. 11 Apprehended Violence Order (AVO): An order that a court makes to protect people. AVOs protect people by ordering the defendant to refrain from certain activities. The defendant must obey the orders made by the Court. The type of AVO depends upon the relationship between the applicant and the defendant. The AVO type refers to either domestic violence or non-domestic (personal) violence. 12 Criminal incident: A criminal incident is defined as an activity detected by or reported to police which: involved the same offender(s); involved the same victim(s); occurred at (or in the case of fire, started at) the one location; occurred during one uninterrupted period of time; falls into one offence category; falls into one incident type (e.g. 'actual', 'attempted', 'conspiracy'). 13 A criminal incident can consist of one or more offences of the same type (and their related victims and offenders) which are grouped into the same unique occurrence if they are committed by the same person or group of persons AND if: they are part of actions committed simultaneously or in sequence over a short period of time at the same place they are part of interrelated actions; that is, where one action leads to the other or where one is the consequence of the other(s) they involve the same action(s) repeated over a long period of time against the same victim(s) and come to the attention of the police at one point in time. 14 For example, one offender assaulting two victims would be counted as one criminal incident. Alternatively, two criminal incidents are recorded in the COPS database if there are two distinct offence types involved (e.g. demand money with menaces and assault) even if the same parties were involved at the same time and in the same place. A criminal incident can have more than one person of interest. 15 Domestic violence: The term domestic relates to any person who cohabited with, or is a carer of, the victim. This can include anyone who has been in a relationship with, and/or who is legally related to, the victim. Where assault or other forms of violence occur in a COPS event police officers are required to record whether it is related to domestic violence. If no criminal offence is recorded, but domestic violence is indicated, a Domestic Violence - no offence COPS incident is recorded. 16 Offence type: Offence categories are derived from COPS incident types; a unique police classification which encompass both offences as well as other police activities. The COPS extract used by BOCSAR is based on a set of offence categories aligned to the 1995 Australian National Classification of Offences (ANCO) issued by the ABS (cat. no. 1234.0). In this product the offence types and sub-categories reported are: 17 Assault domestic violence related non-domestic violence related. 18 Sexual offences sexual assault 19 Robbery robbery without a weapon robbery with a firearm robbery with a weapon not a firearm. 20 Theft break and enter—dwelling break and enter—non-dwelling motor vehicle theft steal from motor vehicle 21 Arson 22 Malicious damage to property 23 Illicit drug offences possession and/or use of drugs (includes the possession and/or use of: cocaine; narcotics; cannabis; and other drugs) dealing/trafficking drugs (includes the possession and/or use of: cocaine; narcotics; cannabis; and other drugs) 24 Driving offences Note that from 2003 onwards , the counting unit for driving offences, including driving causing death, is the number of legal actions commenced. GEOGRAPHY 25 The COPS database has mandatory suburb and postcode fields in which geographical details are entered. A criminal incident is assigned to a region when the location of the incident falls within that region. Data is concorded from postcodes to Local Government Areas (LGAs) using a concordance which proportionately allocates population. COLLECTION METHODOLOGY 26 The COPS database is compiled by NSW Police Service, who enter details of all crimes that are either reported to them by a victim or witness, or which they have detected during the course of their duty. Records are verified by the recording officer or supervisor. A verified record is a record which has been signed off by the recording officer or supervisor. 27 Records created in the COPS database undergo an edit check. Records for a lesser offence can be verified by the entering officer, otherwise records are sent to a supervisor for verification. 28 BOCSAR receive an extract of the COPS database which forms the basis of the BOCSAR Recorded Crime Statistics Database. 29 The BOCSAR Recorded Crime Statistics Database is edited to remove offences not included in their collection and to remove invalid postcodes. ACCURACY 30 Criminal incidents are included in the counting period in which they were reported to or detected by police. In most cases criminal incidents are recorded on the COPS database on the day of reporting. However, because the reporting date and recording date may differ, it is possible for updating of data to occur. That is, data extracted for a specified period of time (incidents reported in 2004, for example) may differ according to the date of extraction. This updating is minimal however, and is unlikely to affect trends in the data. 31 COPS data relates to the date the offence comes to the attention of the police, not the date on which the offence occurs. This is particularly relevant to offences such as homicide and sexual assault. 32 Recorded crime statistics for some offence categories do not accurately reflect the actual level of crime in the community. This is because the number of incidents recorded may be affected by extraneous factors which are not easily measured, in particular: many crimes which occur are not reported to police and will therefore not be recorded, e.g. a large number of assaults, sexual assaults and robberies are not reported to police recording of those offences which are detected by, rather than reported to police are strongly affected by policing practices (for example, drug offences, drink driving offences, offensive behaviour, receiving stolen goods) therefore recorded rates for such offences do not accurately reflect actual rates Sydney Local Government Area (LGA), has high recorded crime rates because, compared with other regions, the resident population is small relative to the number of people using the area. Therefore the area has a high user population which is not reflected in the denominator when calculating rates. recorded crime rates in LGAs with small population sizes are not always a good indicator of offending. Crime rates in areas with populations under 3,000 may be unreliable and should be interpreted with caution. In this product, these rates have been marked with an asterisk (). 33 As this collection is effectively a census of reported crime, the data are not subject to sampling variability. However, other inaccuracies collectively referred to as non-sampling error may affect the data. These non-sampling errors may arise from a number of sources, including: errors in the reporting of data by respondents; errors in the capturing or processing of data; estimation for missing or misreported data; definition and classification errors. COMPARISON WITH OTHER DATA SOURCES* 34 Data sourced directly from the COPS database will differ from data published by BOCSAR because COPS data includes both verified and non-verified records, whereas BOCSAR data exclude non-verified records. COLLECTION HISTORY 35 COPS data are affected by legislative changes. This includes the creation of new offences as well as major initiatives such as mandatory reporting. The results of Ministerial and Ombudsman reviews of legislation can also affect the way offence and activity incidents are recorded and reported. These types of changes may have an impact on reported crime statistics over time. 36 BOCSAR has received COPS data since 1994. PUBLISHED DATA 37 The major annual publication produced by BOCSAR is NSW Recorded Crime Statistics. Information about the COPS data used by BOCSAR is available in that publication. Information on Apprehended Violence Orders is published by BOCSAR in NSW Criminal Court Statistics. RELATED WEB SITES 38 The Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research web site can be found at <www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/bocsar>. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window.