RECORDED CRIME - OFFENDERS COLLECTION
Data from this new collection provide a measure of the number of offenders who come into contact with the criminal justice system at an early stage of the process - that is, the 'Investigation and charging' stage. Following the recording of a crime as reported by a victim or detected by a police officer, the criminal incident moves to an investigation phase. Decisions are made as to whether or not an offender will be proceeded against by police.
This publication presents statistics about alleged offenders aged 10 years and over who were proceeded against by police during the period 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008, for all states and territories, except Western Australia. This is the first issue of what is intended to become an annual series of Recorded Crime - Offender statistics.
Data for Western Australia are not yet available as the data cannot be extracted to meet the statistical requirements of the offenders collection. Therefore, national data are not yet available from this collection, however, it is expected that national data will become available in the future.
The statistics are based on data extracted from the administrative records of state and territory police agencies. National statistics require a level of uniformity when compiling data from different states and territories. Data from the Recorded Crime - Offenders collection have been compiled according to national standards and classifications (see Explanatory Notes, paragraphs 19-23).
Responsibility for policing largely resides with individual Australian state and territory governments, therefore different legislative offences and practices may exist across jurisdictions. National standards and classifications are used to produce comparable data about offenders across jurisdictions, however, there will be genuine differences in data across jurisdictions for some offence types as the data largely reflects the administrative processes of police agencies in dealing with alleged offenders. Furthermore, the range of court and non-court actions available to police when proceeding against offenders may vary across jurisdictions. Public order, property damage and justice offences will differ in Victoria from other jurisdictions as Victorian penalty notices data were not included. For more information about the differences across jurisdictions refer to paragraphs 33-38 of the Explanatory Notes.
Offender counts
An offender is only counted once regardless of how many times he or she may have been dealt with by police during the reference period for the data relating to the profile of offenders. For example, if an offender committed an offence on two different dates during the financial year and police proceeded against the offender for each separate incident, the offender would only be counted once.
Principal offence
The offence categories referred to in this publication relate to an offender's most serious offence, known as the 'principal' offence. For example, an offender committing multiple offences within the same incident (e.g. assault and theft) and only on one occasion during the reference period, would be assigned a principal offence based on the most serious offence type using an ordinal ranking from the National Offence Index (NOI). In this instance, the principal offence would be assault. The same method applies to offenders committing multiple offences on different dates during the financial year. All offences committed by the offender during the financial year are reviewed and one principal offence is assigned to each offender based on the most serious offence.
Offence information is presented for all divisions of the Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC), except for Division 14 - Road Traffic and Motor Vehicle Regulatory Offences, Subdivision 041- Dangerous or negligent operation of a vehicle and Group 1512 - Breach of bail.
For further information about the scope, methodology, classification of offences and definitions used in this publication see Explanatory Notes paragraphs 3-7, 9-17 and 19-23, and the glossary.
For ease of reading, some terms have been abbreviated throughout this publication. The term 'and related offences' has been omitted for the following offences: homicide and related offences; sexual assault and related offences, abduction and related offences; robbery, extortion and related offences; theft and related offences; and deception and related offences.
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