MALICIOUS PROPERTY DAMAGE ^{Endnote 1}

WHAT IS MALICIOUS PROPERTY DAMAGE?

In this survey, malicious property damage is defined as the intentional or wilful (not accidental) damage, defacement or destruction of any part of the person's home or anything usually kept at home. Property is something tangible in nature, including land, conveyances, animals or other objects capable of being privately owned. Destruction can mean any alteration that may render something imperfect or inoperative, including destruction of property, graffiti or vandalism, partial destruction, killing or harming an owned animal and removing or destroying a plant or other part of an owned landscape.

Malicious property damage excludes:

• damage to rental, investment or holiday properties owned by a member of the household
• acts such as turning off water meters and flicking safety switches if no damage to the meter occurred.

WHO EXPERIENCED MALICIOUS PROPERTY DAMAGE IN 2015–16? (Table 6)

During the 12 months prior to interview, an estimated 4.8% of Australian households (434,000) experienced at least one incident of malicious property damage.

WHAT ELSE DO WE KNOW ABOUT MALICIOUS PROPERTY DAMAGE INCIDENTS?

This section discusses characteristics of the most recent incident for households that experienced malicious property damage in the 12 months prior to interview.

As information is only collected in relation to the most recent incident, the findings are not necessarily representative of all incidents experienced by a household in the last 12 months prior to interview (see Technical Note).

REPORTING RATE (Table 24)

Over half (54% or 234,300) of households that experienced malicious property damage had the most recent incident reported to police.

One in five households (22%) did not report to police because they considered the incident too/trivial unimportant. A further 11% believed that there was nothing the police could do.

OTHER SELECTED CHARACTERISTICS (Table 24)

In the most recent incident of malicious property damage, exterior items were the most common type of property damaged, defaced, or destroyed (58%), followed by a car or other motor vehicle (27%).

ENDNOTE

Endnote 1 All comparisons discussed have been tested for statistical significance with a 95% level of confidence that there is a real difference in the two populations being tested. Only data with a relative standard error (RSE) of less than 25% are referred to in the text of this publication and these estimates are considered sufficiently reliable for general use. To determine whether there is a statistical difference between any other two estimates, significance testing should be undertaken. For further information, refer to the Technical Note.