Crime in Australia

Crime in Australia is combated by the Australian police and other agencies.

The number of offenders proceeded against by police during 2013-2014 increased by 4%.

In 2013-2014 the offender rate, which is the number of offenders in the population of Australia, increased by 2%. The number of Youth offenders fell by 4%.

The most prevalent offences are Public Disorder offences, followed by illicit drug offences. The largest percentage increase are sexual assault and related offences which increased by 19%.

From the National Australian Homicide Monitoring program report 2012: "The homicide rate has continued to decline each year, since 1989-90. The periods 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 are the lowest homicide rate since data collection began in 1989"

In fact, the Australian murder rate has fallen to close to one per 100,000 while the US rate is still roughly at 4.5 per 100,000 – over four times as high. Moreover, robberies in Australia occur at only about half the rate of the US (58 in Australia versus 113.1 per 100,000 in the US in 2012).

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that during the 2009/10 year police took action against 375,259 people, up by 4.8 percent from 2008/09 figures. Young offenders aged 10 to 19 comprised about 29 percent of the total offender population across Australia. In the 2009/10 financial year, 84,100 women had police action taken against them across Australia, up by six percent compared with the previous year. 290,400 men had police action taken against them in 2009/10, an annual increase of 4 percent. About 30 percent of the women were accused of theft, whereas the most common principal offence for men was intention to cause injury and matters related to public order. Research from the Australian Institute of Criminology, shows that from 1990 until the middle of 2011, 40 percent of people who were fatally shot by police were suffering from a mental illness. In NSW, the fatalities included Adam Salter (shot dead in Sydney in 2009); Elijah Holcombe (shot dead in Armidale in 2009); and Roni Levi (shot dead on Bondi Beach in 1997). In Victoria, the fatalities included the 2008 highly controversial shooting death of Tyler Cassidy. At age 15, Cassidy is believed to be the youngest person ever shot dead by police in Australia. As of 2010, the homicide rate of Australia is 1.2 per 100,000.

Between 2013 and 2014, in Australia, the number of victims for the majority of offence categories decreased:

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