From 19 December 2019 there will be some changes and improvements to the data released on the Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) website. These changes have included a reorganisation of where data are found on the CSA website and, more importantly, an increase in the amount of data that are available to the public.
We have summarised the key changes and improvements below and have more information available in the Explanatory Notes (External link). If you have any questions, please contact the CSA on 03 8684 1808.
Improved crime by location data visualisations
In response to user feedback, we have revamped the Crime by Location (External link) webpage. The new data visualisations will provide you with a visual snapshot of the data for each local government area (LGA). This new data presentation style will be offered for Recorded offences, Criminal incidents, Alleged offender incidents, Victim reports and Family incidents.
Additional data at local government area geography
All geographic data (LGA, suburb, town or postcode) will now be located on the Crime by Location (External link) webpage and will be presented in two formats: data visualisations and tabular visualisations. As a result of the improvements to the crime by location data, visualisations there will now include more data available at the LGA level, including:
- Recorded offences by location type and LGA
- Recorded offences by investigation status and LGA
- Criminal incidents by location type and LGA
- Criminal incidents by investigation status and LGA
- Alleged offender incidents offence type and LGA
- Alleged offender incidents by sex and LGA
- Alleged offender incidents by age and LGA
- Person victim reports by offence type and LGA
- Person victim reports by sex and LGA
- Person victims reports by age and LGA
- Affected family members by sex and LGA
- Affected family members by age and LGA
- Other parties by sex and LGA
- Other parties by age and LGA.
Improved geography
Recent quality improvements to the geographic data available in relation to Recorded offences and Criminal incidents have now been applied to Alleged offender incidents, Victim reports and Family incidents.
From this release onwards, the crime statistics related to justice and immigration detention facilities will be separated from the LGAs in which they are recorded for all CSA data populations. The rationale for this, is that these facilities sit apart from the rest of the community, and crime occurring in these facilities is not a true reflection of crime occurring within the community. To clearly identify this information these statistics are now represented in their own category in LGA outputs, called ‘Justice institutions and immigration facilities’.
For some areas, that has resulted in small changes from the figures published in previous years that is archived in the historical data on the website. We have re-based all our data in this year ending 30 September 2019 release so the information available in latest crime data and the crime by location tool will have more accurate geographic location information available for up to the last 10 years of data.
Greater use of interactive elements
We have implemented tabular data visualisations across all CSA data populations, previously only available for Recorded offences and Criminal incidents data. Data for Alleged offender incidents, Victim reports and Family incidents will no longer be provided in static excel files but instead by available in tabular visualisations which will enable users to create custom views of the data.
The underlying data that supports the tabular visualisations will be available in an excel file from the ‘download data’ webpage in ‘latest crime data’.
More granular data
As part of these changes we have included more granular or detailed data and provided longer time series (10 years of time series where possible).
For more information about all these changes, see the Explanatory Notes (External link).