April 2, 2013 12:10pm by David Farrar

2012 Crime stats

Pretty good news in the 2012 crime stats, just released:

  • Homicides down 18.1%
  • Assaults rate down 3.4%
  • Sexual assaults up 1.3%
  • Robberies down 10.1%
  • Burglaries down 11.1%
  • Theft down 11.8%

The overall number of crimes is down 7.4% and the crime rate is down 8.0%. Note however the overall rate is a fairly un-useful figure as it treats all crimes as equal magnitude.

I’ve done some quick graphs showing the level of recorded offences and the crime rates for the major categories, since 1996. A variety of stories.

homicides

Thankfully not a large number of homicides, so changes may not be significant. But a nice trend down in the last three years.

Assaults

Assaults and violent offences were definitely trending up until 2009, and have been reducing over the last three years.

Sexual Assaults

Sadly sexual assaults is the one area that has not reduced. This may be due to greater reporting levels.

Thefts

Thefts have been going down pretty constantly for the last 16 years.

Burglaries

Burglaries were pretty constant, but have also started to trend down.

Robberies

Robberies really shot up around a decade ago, then started to reduce from 2006 and decrease more rapidly since 2008.

Crimes

Again the overall rate is not that useful a number but still psychologically important to some. The overall crime rate dropped from 1996 to 2004, and then increased from 2004 to 2009. Since 2009 it has dropped pretty significantly. It is 18.9% lower than three years ago.