NCJ Number
146967
Date Published
1993
Length
50 pages
Annotation
This report describes and analyzes the characteristics of all Australian homicide incidents that occurred between July 1991 and June 1992, including the victims and offenders involved in them.
Abstract
The homicide rate declined slightly to 1.9 per 100,000 population; the number of victims fell from 351 in 1990-91 to 330 in 1991-92. The proportion of male to female victims remained at approximately three to one, and the proportion of male to female offenders remained at about nine to one. Aboriginal people continued to be overrepresented as victims and offenders. For victims the rate was 9 times and for offenders 13 times that for Australia as a whole. Firearms, sharp instruments, and assaults again accounted for almost 90 percent of all homicide. In 1991-92, 22 percent of victims were killed by firearms, a slight decline from 1990-91. For approximately one-third of homicides in which the victim-offender relationship was recorded, the relationship was spousal or between other family members; nearly two-thirds of these family homicides were between spouses. An additional one- third of homicides, where the victim-offender relationship was recorded, occurred between friend and long-term acquaintance. Most of these were young males, and many incidents resulted from apparently trivial or drunken altercations. 8 tables and 11 figures