SAFETY AND JUSTICE

The Safety and Justice section contains the following sub-topics:

• Victims
• Imprisonment
• Offenders

LATEST HIGHLIGHTS



Offender rate for males continues to be much higher than females

Latest data from ABS Recorded Crime - Offenders, Australia (cat. no. 4519.0) shows that in 2013-14 there were 3,140 male and 865 female offenders per 100,000 males and females respectively. These rates have remained relatively stable since 2008-09, with male offender rates consistently more than triple that of female offender rates.



Males and females share top four principal offences

A 'principal offence' describes the most serious offence type for which a person has been proceeded against by police during the reference period (for more information see Glossary in ABS, Recorded Crime - Offenders, 2013-14 (cat. no. 4519.0).

Based on the broad level offence classifications listed in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (ANZSOC), 2011 (cat. no. 1234.0) there are four leading principal offences that are common to both males and females. They are 'acts intended to cause injury', 'public order offences', 'illicit drug offences' and 'theft and related offences'.

Although these four principal offences are the most frequent for both males and females, all rates are significantly lower for females than males.

For females, the highest principal offence rate is for 'theft and related offences' (217 offences per 100,000 females in 2013-14), with little separating the other three principal offences (between 143 and 145 offenders per 100,000 females).



In contrast, offences of a more violent nature ('public order offences' and 'acts intended to cause injury') are highest for males, along with 'Illicit drug offences' (between 557 and 594 offenders per 100,000 males in 2013-14). 'Theft and related offences' was considerably lower than the other three principal offences (with 424 offences per 100,000 males).



Female victims of sexual assault continue to significantly outnumber male victims

Data from the 2014 ABS Recorded Crime – Victims, Australia (cat. no. 4510.0) shows that between 2010 and 2014 females were around five to six times more likely than males to be the victim of sexual assault. Over this period there were between 140 and 145 female victims per 100,000 females compared to between 25 and 30 male victims per 100,000 males.

Between 2010 and 2014 males were around three times more likely to be a victim of robbery than females. Between 2010 and 2014, rates have declined for both males and females, from 87 to 50 male victims per 100,00 males and from 27 to 19 female victims per 100,000 females.


DATA VISUALISATION

A visual representation of the Imprisonment rate from the Safety and Justice domain is shown below. Simply go to the graph and click on the 'Play' button to see changes in the data over time.

Details of the data used to create the graphs, and the original data sources, can be found in the relevant Data Cubes on the Downloads tab.