Crime Paranoia Index
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Yesterday the ABS released a report called Crime Victimisation 2008-09, which contains the results of a survey on crimes and perceptions of crime that have been experienced by over 25,000 people the ABS surveyed between July 2008 and June 2009.
One of the more unusual parts of the report was a question on perceptions of crime, specifically the perceived crime problems that are manifest in the local neighbourhood. If we use the proportion of people that believe various types of crime are a problem in their neighbourhood, this is what the results come in as, broken down by State (click to expand).
The usual suspects pop up here, starting with those perennial favourites of politicians with nothing else to say – the dreaded hooning (politely called “dangerous/noisy driving” by the good folks at the ABS) and vandalism/graffiti.
While all this is interesting, we might try to have a bit of fun here with what is usually a serious set of topics and create a Crime Paranoia Index to see which state has the greatest gap between the expectations/perceptions of crime and the actual level of reported crime.
For the latter, the ABS has another handy little report called Recorded Crime – Victims, Australia, 2008 which they describe as:
Contains uniform national statistics relating to victims of crime for a selected range of offences that have become known to and recorded by police. The statistics provide indicators of the level and nature of recorded crime as it relates to victims in Australia and measures change over time.
This publication provides a breakdown of the selected offences by: victim characteristics (age and sex); the nature of the incident (weapon use and location); and outcome of police investigations at 30 days. These data are also available by state and territory. The collection also provides for selected state and territories information about the relationship of the offender to victim and the Indigenous status of a victim.
There are five categories of crime for which we have both the ABS perception results and the actual reported offences of crime that we can use here; car theft, other theft, assault, sexual assault and burglary.With burglary, we can use the “Housebreakings/burglaries/theft from homes” for the perceptions data and the “unlawful entry with intent” data from the reported crime data set.
If we look at just the raw data to start with – the estimated number of people concerned about crime types vs. the reported number of offences, this is what we get:
Next up, we’ll create a ratio of perceptions-to-crime by dividing the number of people concerned about a crime type by the number of offences reported for that crime type.
This tells us how many people are concerned per reported crime.
For example, Australia wide there was 43.8 people concerned about car theft for every one actual reported offence of car theft.
Now we can rank these results from highest to lowest. So for each category, the State that gets the highest ratio gets a score of 1, the state with the second highest ratio gets a score of 2 etc etc.
Now we have our results, we can aggregate them to see how all the states are ranked in terms of their crime paranoia.
Victoria is the state which has the greatest gap between crime expectations & perception compared to actual reported offences – being ranked first in car theft and assault, second in sexual assault and burglary and coming in third on other theft.
Compare that to South Australia – the least paranoid state – where they came in last on sexual assault and burglary, second last on assault and other theft, while being 4th on car theft.
Not only did Victoria come in first on the paranoia rankings, but they came in first by a long way – daylight was second.
So, all you paranoid Victorians out there – look out behind you!! 
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As a Victorian who has been the victim of car theft, other theft and burglary (all separate incidents), I feel justified in saying that it’s not paranoia if ‘they’ really are out to get you
Can’t really say much about those other Victorians though. Maybe it’s an Underbelly phenomenon.
I have no idea if this it true, but I’ve heard it alleged quite often that Victoria has chronic under-reporting of crime, due to a highly politicised system aimed squarely at reducing crime statistics, rather than crime as such.
But that could just be slanderous gossip.
Possum – There’s another task for you – compare these statistics with the official crime statistics.
Andrew – funny you should say that. I was just getting berated on twitter over that very same thing. Early next week it shall be done!
Why are they so paranoid in the ACT? And we in NSW seem to be comparatively relaxed. Or maybe we aren’t and there’s simply a lot of crime here.
Given there is a general agreement on the under-reporting of sexual assault, if you take those figures out of the calculation, doesnt that even up the states?
bsg, we don’t know the distribution of under reporting, so we don’t know if Victoria is relatively under or over represented there. But if we removed it, it doesnt make any difference to the ultimate rankings.
I was surprised by how high car theft rated especially in Vic. Is it just because lots of people have cars and are concerned they could be stolen, even from the “safe” area they live in?
It does refer to local neighbourhood so it may be that cars get stolen locally, but assaults happen in suburbs where people don’t live?
Poss, is there a similar stats bureau in the US to the ABS, that I can get similar figures to those on the excellent ABS page you linked to?
It is my opinion that US citizens are more paranoid about crime than we are, but it would be good to have reliable stats to base that on.
Bogdanovist, would you have got that impression from the Herald Sun?
9
Don
This might be a start.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/2009prelimsem/index.html
In any case let Google be your friend and google
‘American crime statistics’ and take your pick.
Gaffhook@12:
[Don
This might be a start.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/2009prelimsem/index.html=
That site highlights the problem. There appears to be no reliable summary for the entire US. You get it in bits and pieces, such as that site gives. You’ve got percentage changes, which are useless, and by city, which is useless.
What I am looking for is something like the ABS site, and so far I’ve had no luck.
There’s this site, but I am not sure of how reliable it is:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us-united-states/cri-crime
I’ve just found via Wikipedia the FBI site, but I find it difficult to navigate:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/index.html
What I guess there is not, is the US equivalent of the ABS, a wonderful institution.
Very strong police union in Victoria, beginning and end of story.
On behalf of all Victorians, I’d just like to thank the Herald Sun, without which we would never have managed to win this competition.
Is the SA Government now going to spruik this site to bolster their law and order credentials in the (now up and running) election campaign?
When did concern become paranoia? I know crime is not as big a problem as popular belief has it, but being concerned about crime does not, to me, equal paranoia about crime.
You mean like the paranoia about asylum seekers or “terrorism”?
It is paranoid if your fears are unjustified.
It is concern when your fears are justified.
Well, exactly. Fearing a minniscule amount of refugees is paranoid, fearing that a few disgruntled Arabs will destroy Western Civilization is paranoid. But being concerned about crime is not, unless you are actually convinced you will fall victim to it.
These findings don’t surprise me, this effect has been observed in the US where they believe its partly a result of media focus on crime as news.
Another interpretation of the data is that Victorians have an average perception of crime, but live in a vastly safer state.
True. Why are Victorians so paranoid about crime, when their police force is so much more likely to be the one applying deadly force?
Proof that too many Victorians read the Hun.
These results are a fine achievement by the Herald Sun. You guys, well done.
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