Mapping Crime, Offenders and Socio-demographic Factors
Overview
This study by the Crime Research Centre describes the patterns in crime rates across regions in Western Australia, as well as corresponding patterns in police-offender contact and socio-demographic conditions. The researchers involved in the project were Frank Morgan, John Fernandez and Anna Ferrante.
The study was conducted in response to the WA government's Ministry of Justice’s requirement for research to map the following:
a) where crimes currently occur, broken down by type of crime, and to relevant levels of geographic detail;
b) where known offenders, i.e. those arrested for and/or convicted of offences, come from in terms of the location of their usual residence at the time of the offence;
c) where factors known to be predictive of offending are most prevalent. These factors were to include those shown by research to be predictive, and needed to include for consideration those listed in the Action Plan to Address the Cycle of Aboriginal Juvenile Offending (the Action Plan).
The purpose of this consultancy was to inform crime prevention policy by locating the areas where specific types of prevention action may work best. Specifically the report was to inform the choice of and debate over areas suitable for the mounting of specific initiatives, including sites for the Action Plan and other inter-agency initiatives.
Specific objectives were to establish a repeatable methodology for mapping crime, offenders and relevant social factors in a way that could inform policy and debate on primary, secondary prevention interventions with offenders or potential offenders, as well as informing traditional physical and environmental crime prevention.
The list of social factors included in the study includes demographic (total population, age, sex and Aboriginality) as well as social and economic (educational background, employment and socio-economic indexes) which are often found to correlate with recorded crime and police-offender contact. The demographic factors allow the calculation of relevant rates of crime and police-offender contact and provide a picture of the social location of recorded crime to accompany the geographical picture which emerges from the study.
Some Results of the Study
· Property offences comprise over eighty percent of all recorded offences in Western Australia and rates of property crime are higher in the Perth metropolitan area than they are in any Regional Development Commission region. However, rates for offences against the person are higher for the regions of Kimberley, Gascoyne, Goldfields-Esperance, Pilbara and the Mid-West than they are for Perth. Similar patterns apply to offences against good order. Furthermore, regional drug offence rates are generally higher than those in Perth.
· The study confirms the significance of earlier research conducted by the Crime Research Centre in 1998, in that crime rates in regional towns have a major impact on overall regional crime rates. Crime rates vary substantially among towns just as rate differences between towns and more rural parts of the region may be substantial. The impact of towns is not restricted to personal offences: a number of regional towns have property crime rates higher than those recorded in the Perth metropolitan area.
· Just as within-region differences are important, so are differences in crime rates within the metropolitan area. Local Government areas vary in their rates of crime. Crime rates as well as the mix of crimes in each area are influenced by the varying opportunities for crime provided by their mix of social and economic activity, but also by the differential rates of police-offender contact recorded in different residential areas.
· Rates of recorded crime and recorded contact with police do not necessarily represent ‘true’ rates of crime or ‘true’ patterns of offending. Because of this, crime surveys designed to provide regional crime data are of great potential importance. They could illuminate the extent to which regional differences in crime and police-offender contact represent differences in levels of victimisation; differences in the propensity of citizens to report crime to police; or regional differences in the ability of police to ‘clear-up’ offences.
· Nevertheless, recorded levels of crime and police contact with offenders are important social indicators. They represent the extent to which citizens have found it necessary to call for public assistance in dealing with crime and the extent to which offenders have been publicly identified. They also indicate the mobilisation of considerable public resources and, however imperfectly, reflect the consequences of crime for victims and offenders. They provide a starting point for a systematic consideration of relative need for crime prevention resources on a geographic basis.
The report can be downloaded here [PDF 2.5Mb]
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