Australia witnesses decrease in crime levels

CANBERRA - Crime levels in Australia has been generally on the decline, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology's (AIC) annual report into crime trends released Friday.

"This is a good result for law enforcement agencies across the country, but we still have a lot more work to do," Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Justice Jason Clare said.

The annual report, titled Australian Crime: Facts & Figures, revealed that the number of recorded victims of robbery has decreased by 7 percent from 14,582 in 2009-10 to 13,617 in 2010-11, while that of victims of sexual assault fell 3 percent to 17,238 victims.

However, the year 2010-11 saw 67 more recorded victims of kidnapping and abduction than 2009-10.

The number of homicide victims saw a small increase, but the rate remained at historically low levels of 1.2 per 100,000 people.

Fraud is generally declining albeit fraud committed on credit and charge cards has continued to increase following the trend of previous year.

Between 2010 and 2011, fraud per 1,000 AU dollar ($1,000) transacted on these accounts increased from 67.24 cents to 96.04 cents, a total increase of 43 percent.

The report also has made demographic analysis on the most common offenders, which showed that offending rates were highest for both males and females aged 15-19 years. The rate of offending for most violent crimes was highest around 17 years of age.

Some 74 percent of prisoners in 2011 were of non-indigenous backgrounds. However, the rate of imprisonment of indigenous offenders was 18 times higher at 2,276 per 100,000 people, compared to 125 per 100,000 for non-indigenous offenders.