NCJ Number
209935
Date Published
February 2005
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This bulletin reports the findings of an analysis of a number of crime-relevant factors that changed over the period the property crime rates declined in Australia.
Abstract
Although it has been commonly assumed that the decline in property crime in New South Wales and in Australia in general can be attributed primarily to the decline in heroin consumption due to a heroin shortage, this study identified other factors involved in the decline as well. Researchers obtained data on a host of factors that previous research had linked to the rate of property crime, namely, increases in drug treatment, the level of long-term unemployment, average real earnings, and trends in arrest and imprisonment. The analysis regressed property crime against measures of these factors by using Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) regression techniques. The analysis found that declining rates of heroin consumption have clearly contributed to the decline in burglary and robbery, but other factors have also had a role in sustaining these downward trends. In the case of burglary, these factors include an increase in the number of heroin users re-entering treatment, an increase in the rate of imprisonment for burglary, and an increase in average weekly earnings. The decline in long-term unemployment among young males may also have contributed to the decline in property crime; however, the coefficient on this variable did not quite reach the standard threshold for statistical significance. Unlike burglary, imprisonment has not apparently contributed to the decline in robbery. The analysis also explains why various factors prevented heroin users from switching to cocaine during the heroin shortage. 11 figures, 14 notes, and appended supplementary data