CHANGE IN RATES OF CRIME OVER TIME

This section provides an analysis of changes in crime victimisation rates over the period 2008–09 to 2017–18 for selected personal and household crime types in Australia and in each state and territory.

Personal crimes (Table 4) include:

• total assault
• physical assault
• total threatened assault
• face-to-face threatened assault
• non face-to-face threatened assault
• robbery (national level only)
• sexual assault (national level only).

Household crimes (Table 6) include:

• break-in
• attempted break-in
• motor vehicle theft
• theft from a motor vehicle
• malicious property damage
• other theft.

Victimisation rates are the number of victims (persons or households) expressed as a percentage of the relevant population.

Significance testing has been undertaken to examine whether there was a statistically significant difference between the 2008–09 and 2017–18 victimisation rates, with any significant increase or decrease highlighted in the text. Significance testing is a comparison of two time points only, so caution should be taken when analysing apparent patterns in victimisation rates over time.

The graphs and commentary in this chapter include only those crime types where all estimates have an RSE of less than 25%. Survey error should be taken into account when analysing changes across time periods. For more information about survey error and significance testing, refer to the Technical Note.