Explanatory notes
Definitions and explanatory notes for recorded crime statistics
CAUTIONARY NOTES ABOUT CRIME DATA
These data consist of criminal incidents reported to police and recorded on the NSW Police Force's Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS).
Recorded crime statistics for some offence categories do not accurately reflect the actual level of crime in the community. This is because the number of incidents recorded may be affected by extraneous factors which are not easily measured. In particular:
- Many crimes which occur are not reported to police and will therefore not be recorded - for example, a large number of assaults, sexual assaults and robberies are not reported to police.
- Recording of those offences which are detected by, rather than reported to police are strongly affected by policing practices - examples of these are drug offences, drink driving offences, offensive behaviour and receiving stolen goods. Recorded rates for such offences do not accurately reflect actual rates.
- Sydney Local Government Area, and therefore Inner Sydney Statistical Subdivision, has high recorded crime rates because, compared with other regions, the resident population is small relative to the number of people in the area. In other words the area has a high user population which is not reflected in the denominator of the rate calculation.
- Recorded crime rates in Local Government Areas with small population sizes are not always a good indicator of offending. Crime rates in areas with populations under 3,000 may be unreliable and should be interpreted with caution. These areas are listed below.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS WITH POPULATIONS LESS THAN 3,000 IN THE YEAR 2006
Lord Howe Island (Mid North Coast SD)
Brewarrina (North Western SD)
Bombala (South Eastern SD)
Boorowa (South Eastern SD)
Murrumbidgee (Murrumbidgee SD)
Balranald (Murray SD)
Conargo (Murray SD)
Jerilderie (Murray SD)
Urana (Murray SD)
Central Darling (Far West SD)
Unincorporated Far West (Far West SD)
WHAT RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS REPRESENT
The tables provide recorded crime statistics, by type of offence, for a hierarchy of regions:
- Statistical Divisions
- Statistical Subdivisions
- Local Government Areas
Statistical Divisions and Subdivisions are geographic areas defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The data consist of criminal incidents reported to police and recorded on the NSW Police Force's Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS).
The counting units are recorded criminal incidents, except for murder and manslaughter where the counting units are victims.
The data are categorised by date of reporting to police (or date of detection by police) rather than date of occurrence of the incident.
A criminal incident is assigned to a region when the location of the incident falls within that region.
Recorded criminal incidents which occurred in custodial institutions are not included in the data for the Statistical Division or Local Government Area where the custodial institution is located, but are included in the data for New South Wales.
The tables show both the number of recorded criminal incidents and the rates per 100,000 population for each year between 2003 and 2007 inclusively. For the calculation of rates, the population data were sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics publication, Regional Population Growth, Australia (Catalogue No. 3218.0).
DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED IN RECORDED CRIME STATISTICS
The data in this report are extracted from the NSW Police Force’s Computerised Operational Policing System (COPS). This system is used for record-keeping for all police operations, not just for criminal matters.
In this report:
- the counting units are recorded criminal incidents rather than recorded offences (except for murder and manslaughter where the counting units are victims, and driving offences where the counting units are legal actions commenced); and
- the data are categorised by date of reporting to police (or date of detection by police) rather than by date of occurrence of the offence.
Recorded Criminal Incidents
A criminal incident is defined as an activity detected by or reported to police which:
- involved the same offender(s);
- involved the same victim(s);
- occurred at the one location;
- occurred during one uninterrupted period of time;
- falls into one offence category;
- falls into one incident type (for example, ‘actual’, ‘attempted’, ‘conspiracy’).
One incident may involve two offenders assaulting the same victim. This would be recorded as one assault incident. Alternatively, suppose a man reports to police that he found his neighbour in the process of damaging his car and, when confronted, the neighbour assaulted him. For such an event, two criminal incidents are recorded because two distinct offence types are involved (malicious damage to property and assault) even though the same parties were involved at the same time and in the same place.
Recorded Victims
For murder and manslaughter only, the counting units used are victims. Under the definition of a criminal incident (same parties, same time, same place, same offence and same incident type) one murder or manslaughter incident could involve two or more persons being killed. Because of the seriousness of these offences and their relatively small numbers, it is considered to be more appropriate to count the number of victims, rather than the number of criminal incidents. Hence, where one murder incident involves a person killing six people, six murder victims are counted.
Legal Actions Commenced
For driving offences, including driving causing death, the counting unit is the number of legal actions commenced by police rather than the number of incidents recorded. Legal actions include infringement notices, court referrals, formal cautions under the Young Offenders Act 1997 and youth justice conference referrals. Incidents that do not result in a formal legal process are not counted. Legal actions have replaced recorded incidents for driving offences from 2003 onwards. This is because in July 2003, NSW Police changed the way they classify traffic incidents on COPS and, as a result, the incidence of specific driving offences can no longer be determined directly from police incident categories. Driving offence data from 2003 onwards are not comparable with earlier statistics.
Offence Categories
The classification of offences in this report is broadly based on the Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC) devised by the Australian Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (ABS 1997 Cat. No. 1234.0).
For all type of offence classifications used in the report, Appendix 1 lists the offence categories included in the classification. The original offence categories are those used by the NSW Police Force and do not necessarily correspond exactly with offences defined in legislation.
IMPORTANT NOTE. In 2004 the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reviewed the offence classifications used in this report. The review aimed to reduce the size of ‘other’ offence categories and improve the composition of offence categories. Arising from the 2004 review were several significant changes:
- The composition of all three types of robbery (without a weapon, with a firearm and with a weapon not a firearm) changed significantly. Demand money with menaces, previously counted as a separate offence, was included in robbery. The method used to identify involvement of a weapon was improved, and consequently the number of identified armed robberies increased. Robbery statistics in this report should not be compared with robbery statistics reported in publications prior to 2004. Please contact the Bureau for comparable robbery data for earlier years. For comparability, the new counting rules have been retrospectively applied to data from earlier years.
- Drug offences that involve amphetamines and ecstacy were separately identified. Prior to 2004 they were contained within other drug offences.
- Since the 2004 report, the following offences have been separately enumerated: harassment, intimidation and private nuisance, receiving or handling stolen goods, trespass, criminal intent, manufacture drug, liquor offences, pornography offences, escape custody, resist or hinder officer and transport regulatory offences.
- The following offences are still included in the report but their composition was changed significantly in 2004: other offences against the person, other offences against justice procedures, prostitution offences, other drug offences, regulated and prohibited weapons offences and other offences.
There have also been significant changes in the way driving offences are reported. As mentioned above, from 2003 onwards the counting units for driving offences have been the number of legal actions commenced rather than the number of recorded incidents. This change meant that very detailed information became available about the specific offence committed, through the Act and Section of the charge (or Lawpart Code). As a result we have been able to align the offence categories reported for driving offences with those in the Australian Standard Offence Classification (ASOC). Driving offence data from 2003 onwards are not comparable with earlier statistics.
Since the 2005 report, assault has been partitioned into two separate categories: domestic violence related and non-domestic violence related. The NSW Police Force classify an assault as domestic violence related where they believe the alleged offender is currently or was previously linked to the victim in any of the following ways: 1) married, in a defacto or intimate personal relationship; 2) living in the same household or residential facility; 3) in a relationship involving his or her dependence on alleged offender; 4) a relative. Otherwise the assault is classified as non-domestic violence related.
Link to Changes in criminal offence categories - pdf 206kb
Counting Period
Criminal incidents are included in the counting period in which they were reported to or detected by police.
In most cases criminal incidents are recorded on COPS on the day of reporting. It is possible for some updating of data to occur. That is, data extracted for a specified period of time (incidents reported in 2007, for example), may differ according to the date of extraction of the data.
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