Hon Amy Adams

Minister of Justice

14 March 2016

New BPS measures to track family violence and reoffending

Three new Better Public Services supporting measures will help drive the public sector to understand the scale and impact of family violence and the number of re-offenders, Justice Minister Amy Adams has announced.

Ms Adams today released the Justice Sector’s BPS results for the quarter ending September 2015, which show reductions in the rates of total crime (down 17 per cent), youth crime (down 39 per cent), re-offending (down 7.7 per cent) and violent crime (down 10 per cent) since 2011.

“The BPS violent crime measure combine both family violence and other types of violence which clouds progress and conflates two different crime problems, each of which requires a different response,” Ms Adams says.

“The creation of two new supporting measures of violent crime will provide better insight about the violent crime rate.”

These two measures are:

· Violent offences in private dwellings (a proxy for family violence); and

· Violent offences in public places.

“While the targeted 20 per cent reduction in all violent crime by June 2017 is a deliberately ambitious goal for the justice sector, these new results shows violence in public places is down 19 per cent since June 2011.

“The pattern of violent crime committed in dwellings shows a smaller reduction and is down 3 per cent over the same period.

“While it’s not clear why family violence is reducing more slowly than violence in public places, the likely cause is increased public awareness and reporting, which we actively encourage.

“This new way of representing family violence in our BPS results will help us gain a better understanding of the levels of violence within the home. This in turn can help target services where they are needed,” Ms Adams says.

The latest BPS figures also include a new supporting measure for the re-offending rate, to provide more clarity about the number of criminals who re-offend within 12 months of being released from prison or starting a community sentence.

“The measure shows that despite the reduction in the reoffending rate slipping back recently, there has been a 25 per cent decrease in the number of people reoffending since June 2011. This was driven by a 27 per cent fall in the number of reconvictions of people who have served community sentences. What this tells us is that volumes overall have fallen but there are a number of offenders who are more likely to re-offend,” Ms Adams says.

“These supporting measures are not about shifting the goalposts, but helping paint a more complete picture of progress so we can target funding and services to areas of greatest need.”

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