VICTIMS OF ASSAULT, SELECTED STATES AND TERRITORIES

INTRODUCTION

This section presents statistics about victims of assault that were recorded by state and territory police during the period of 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014. Assault data presented in this section is only available for New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. For more information refer to Explanatory Notes paragraphs 17–21.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status data for victims of assault is only presented for New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory (for more information refer to Explanatory Notes paragraph 53).

The data in this chapter is drawn from the Data Cubes titled:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Victims (Tables 17-22); and
• Victims of Assault, selected states and territories (Tables 23-27).

VICTIMS OF ASSAULT

Between 2013 and 2014:

• The number of recorded victims of assault decreased in New South Wales (4.9% to 65,576 victims), Western Australia (1.2% to 24,996 victims), the Northern Territory (9.3% to 7,223 victims) and the Australian Capital Territory (7.3% to 1,705 victims); and
• In South Australia, the number of recorded victims of assault increased by 5.2% (from 15,220 victims in 2013 to 16,005 in 2014).

Across all selected states and territories during 2014:

• Persons aged between 25 and 34 years accounted for a larger proportion of assault victims than any other age group;
• For victims of assault, no weapon was used by the offender in the majority of these incidents;
• Assault was more likely to have occurred at a residential or community location; and
• A larger proportion of victims reported knowing the offender.