A glimmer of hope on the mean streets

Statistics coming out of NSW this week suggest that the 40-year trend of rising crime in Australia may be coming to an end. Over the past two years, robberies, burglaries and car theft fell substantially in NSW, while assaults and theft remained roughly constant.

Of course, we need to be cautious before rushing to conclusions. These latest figures may turn out to be a temporary blip, and they only relate to one state. We also need to check these officially recorded crime rates against evidence from victim report studies, for not all crimes get logged.

But having said that, there are some grounds here for guarded optimism. Serious crime in Australia has risen by more than 500 per cent since the 1960s; in the NSW figures, there are signs that this appalling trend may be topping out. If we have turned the corner, what might be the cause? What have we been doing wrong for the past 40 years that we have now begun to do right? The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, Don Weatherburn, wisely told journalists that it is too soon to answer that question. Nevertheless, we can float a few suggestions.

It is important to emphasise that there is no single cause of crime. Social changes such as the decline in the stability of the family, the rise in youth unemployment, the questioning of traditional morality in our schools, media and even churches almost certainly played a part.

So too did our growing affluence – we have probably become more materialistic, and we also now own more things for other people to steal. And the spread of illicit drug use has also been a factor, for we know that a large proportion of property crimes is drug-related.

The way we have responded to rising crime has also contributed to the problem. Through the '60s and '70s, as serious crime rates were exploding, we backed off the use of prison and we failed to boost police numbers. The result is that crime got safer for criminals. Even though we have begun to increase police numbers and lock up more criminals in the past 10 years, the chances of going to prison if you commit a serious offence are today still only about one in 35. In the mid '60s they were one in eight.

WHILE all of these factors have contributed to the rise in crime, can they help explain the drop that NSW has experienced in the past year? Our family and employment situations have not dramatically changed; traditional moralities are still eroding; and we are still getting more affluent.

Police and prison numbers have been rising in recent years, but only enough to keep pace with rising crime. A recent heroin drought may have reduced drug-taking, but it seems unlikely that this alone could have produced the turnaround. So, what else has changed in NSW? One possible factor is policing strategy. Starting with the implementation of City Safe in 1998 and continuing with Operation Viking last year, the NSW police have been targeting crime hot spots by maintaining a highly visible presence on the streets. They have also increased their use of stop-and-search powers in the search for weapons, and their move-on powers, which are used against drug dealers and users in public places.

It is possible that all this is now paying off. If so, it would support some key elements of the so-called "broken windows" theory of policing. The analogy is with a broken window in an empty building. If the window is not repaired, then all the other windows will soon get broken too because people get the impression that nobody cares. The theory suggests that it is important that the police send out a message that there is order in our unruly neighbourhoods, that rules are being enforced and that disorder must be kept in check.

When this theory was implemented in New York City, it led to spectacular results (the crime rate fell by more than 60 per cent between 1993 and 2001). Now that the NSW police have implemented some aspects of the New York model, it seems they too may be getting results. But two final words of caution are in order.

First, we don't know for sure whether the change in policing tactics really has been a factor in the apparent drop in crime. This should become clearer later this year when nationwide statistics become available, for then we shall be able to compare the outcomes of different strategies pursued by police in different states.

Secondly, in New York the police also benefited from a significant increase in police numbers (10,000 extra officers were recruited during the '90s, a 25 per cent increase), and they enjoyed the support of a justice system that sought to ensure that the criminals they were catching were taken off the street.

We should not allow one set of encouraging figures to make us complacent. Much remains to be done.

Nicole Billante and Peter Saunders are researchers at The Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.