4125.0 - Gender Indicators, Australia, Feb 2016

ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 23/02/2016

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In This Issue Key Series and Indicators Economic Security Education Health Work and Family Balance Safety and Justice Democracy, Governance and Citizenship Future releases Gender equality -- are we there yet? (Media Release) About this Release History of changes	SAFETY AND JUSTICE The Safety and Justice section contains the following sub-topics: Victims (of violence, sexual harassment and stalking) Imprisonment (including rates by offence, sentence length) Offenders (by age and principal offence) Detailed data for these sub-topics is available from the Downloads tab, above (see Table 5). HIGHLIGHTS Victims Between 2010 and 2014, females were around five to six times more likely than males to be a victim of sexual assault (between 140 and 145 female victims per 100,000 females compared with between 25 and 30 male victims per 100,000 males). See Table 5.8 for more detail. Males were around three times more likely to be a victim of robbery than females, although rates declined for both males and females over this time, from 87 to 50 male victims per 100,000 males and from 27 to 19 female victims per 100,000 females (see Table 5.8). In 2013-14, men (51%) were slightly more likely than women (48%) to report an incident of personal crime (physical assault, face-to-face threatened assault, or robbery), representing the first instance since 2008-09 that men's reporting rates outnumbered women's (see Figure 1 below, and Table 5.7 via the Downloads tab for more detail). Footnote(s): (a) Persons aged 15 years and over. (b) ABS analysis has shown that there are insufficient reference periods at this point in time to accurately conduct time series analysis. It is recommended that changes in reporting to police behaviours for physical assault and face-to-face threatened assault be analysed by comparing whether there is a statistically significant movement from a base year (eg. 2008-09) to the current year (2012-13). (c) Estimates should be interpreted with caution, taking into consideration the associated Relative Standard Errors. Source(s): ABS Crime Victimisation, Australia (cat. no. 4530.0) Imprisonment At 30 June 2015, there were 2,876 women and 33,256 men in Australian adult corrective services facilities (see Table 5.9). Between 30 June 2014 and 30 June 2015: The imprisonment rate increased for all people except 18-19 year old males, 18 year old females, and females aged 65 years and over (see Figure 2 below, and Table 5.9 for more detail). The median sentence length for women dropped from 24 to 20 months, but the median sentence length for men remained unchanged at 36 months (see Table 5.12). Footnote(s): (a) From 2006, in all States and Territories except Queensland, persons remanded or sentenced to adult custody are aged 18 years and over. In Queensland, 'adult' refers to persons aged 17 years and over. Prior to 2006, in Victoria persons aged 17 years and over were also referred to as 'adult'. Rates are per 100,000 adult population. (b) Prisoner numbers for 2001 to 2014 have been revised due to the use of a different methodology for protecting the confidentiality of prisoners. Source(s): ABS Prisoners in Australia, 2015 (cat. no. 4517.0) At 30 June 2015, there were 1,966 female and 24,193 male sentenced prisoners. Around 9.6% of female sentenced prisoners had homicide and related offences as their most serious offence, compared with 9.1% of male sentenced prisoners. While women were more likely to have fraud, deception and related offences as their most serious offence (9.7% compared with 2.1% of male sentenced prisoners), men were more likely to have sexual assault and related offences as their most serious offence (13.4% compared with 1.8% of female sentenced prisoners). See Table 5.11 for more detail. Offenders 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 (see Table 5.14). Acts intended to cause injury, public order offences, illicit drug offences and theft and related offences were the most common principal offences for both males and females. However, all rates were much lower for females. The highest offender rate for females was for theft and related offences. Footnote(s): (a) Rate per 100,000 persons aged 10 years and over Source(s): ABS Recorded Crime - Offenders, Australia, 2013-14 (cat. no. 4519.0) Public order offences (littering, swearing, drinking in public, urinating in public) and acts intended to cause injury were highest for males, along with illicit drug offences. Between 2012-13 and 2013-14, the male offender rate for sexual assault and related offences increased from 57.4 to 66.3 per 100,000, in contrast to the steady decrease observed since 2008-09 (see Figure 4 below). The female rate increased from 3.1 to 4.6 per 100,000 in this time (see Table 5.14 for more detail). Footnote(s): (a) Rate per 100,000 persons aged 10 years and over Source(s): ABS Recorded Crime - Offenders, Australia, 2013-14 (cat. no. 4519.0) Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window.