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Question: Is crime really getting worse in
Australia, or is it a figment of excessive surveillance, moral panic and the
media?
If you get your
news from any of the major media outlets such as newspapers, radio and free to
air television, most days will have an update that has a crime related issue.
These issues can relate to the actual occurrence of crime, court outcomes or
political responses to crime. Reporting of crime can make us feel as though we
live in a crime riddled world, that it is unsafe to walk our streets and
contributes to our overall feelings of moral panic. This essay aims to examine
if crime really is getting worse, is it a figment of our imaginations fuelled
by excessive surveillance, moral panic and the incessant chatter of media
outlets. This essay is not written in any way to devalue the victims experience
and acknowledges the range of pain and damage that victims carry for all of
their life.
Crime is
recorded by a number of data sources including the Australian Bureau of
Statistics (ABS) who produces different data sets that look at specific crime
data for specific areas and take a broader approach by including crime
statistics in publications such as the ‘Australian Year Book’. The Australian Institute
of Criminology (AIoC) synthesises data taken from these credible sources to
produce Australian Crime: facts and
figures. The aim of the publication is to give an overview of what has been
happening to Australian crime figures throughout the year with some longitudinally
comparison since 1993 (AIoC, 2011). The AIoC report selects the following
profiles for reporting, homicide, assault, sexual assault, robbery, motor
vehicle theft, other theft, drug arrests, federal charges, unlawful entry with
intent, and fraud and deception related crimes (AIoC 2011). The AIoC provides
details on the logistics of crime and crime categories such as crimes against
males and females. Some of the crime categories are broken down into sub
categories such as murder and manslaughter, in the murder category there has
been a steady downward trend with the usual highs and lows that comes with
record keeping eg. in 1993 murders were just under 300 in the calendar year, in
1999 it peaked at 344 and has decreased by 3% per year and stood at 229
recorded for 2010 ( AIoC 2011pp 16/179). Manslaughter in the same period has remained
steady with under 50 crimes recorded each year since 1993(AIoC, 2011pp16). The
AIoC provides on-line research tools including longitudinal graphs on crime categories;
these graphs clearly show an increase in assaults but a decline in the theft of
motor vehicles (AIoC. 2013). The AIoC reports ‘Highlights’ that violent crime
and property crime incidents are decreasing. The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and
Research (BoCSaR) in their brief ‘An update of long term trends in property and
violent crime NSW 1990-2012’ correlates with the AIoC and comes to the
following conclusion.
‘In the period since 1990, assault and sexual assault rates recorded significant
long term upward trends whilst the other eight offences analysed in this report
were trending down or stable. The 2012 recorded sexual assault rate was
marginally above the previous highs of 2009 and 2010 and the rate since 2000
has recorded a significant uptrend. Apart from sexual assault, the remaining
nine offence types have recorded significant downtrends in recorded rates since
2000. The three robbery and three property crime rates have all recorded falls
of more than 55% since 2000.’ (NSW bureau of Crime Statistics and Research,
April 2013)
‘Is crime
getting worse in Australia?’ A brief investigation of statistics reveals that
finding an answer is complex as there are many categories of crime and
locations for crimes to be committed. However if we take the overall
conclusions and highlights from annual or topical publications such as those
produced by AIoC and BoCSaR we can arrive confidently to make a broad statement that crime is in fact
decreasing in Australia other than the category of assault which is increasing
and is often fuelled by alcohol abuse.
Acts of crime in
particular violent crime such as assault, shootings and murder are often
subject to dissemination through the mass media and in our high speed digital
age we are often ‘witness’ to these violent acts committed in our own and other
western countries in a rapid fashion. In reporting violent crime we are often
subjected to ‘eyewitness accounts’ video clips and journalist reports. Crime is
a staple in our ‘news’ diet. Williams and Dickinson (1993) argue that the over
representation of some categories of crime in newspapers is partially
responsible for perceptions held by the public that crime is rampant and much
higher than the statistics reveal, they describe this as ‘fear of crime’ which
is a form of moral panic. Williams and Dickinson are cognisant that Newspapers
are not the sole basis for opinion forming, their research reached an
indecisive but indicative conclusion that ‘papers that report the most crime…in
the most salient fashion (visually and stylistically) have readers with the
highest level of ‘fear of crime’(Williams and Dickinson 2003 pp51). American
researchers Gilliam and Iyengar found that television that relied on a ‘crime
script’ such as the news has a socialising effect on its audience and that the
audience was more likely to demand ‘more punitive policies’ to deal with crime (Gilliam,
and Iyengar, 2000, pp571). Although Gilliam and Iyengar focused much of their
work around attitudes towards ‘race’ we can draw many similarities here in
Australia in regards to racial prejudices and mainstream news.
The 2005 the
Cronulla riots is an example of racial prejudicing in the media. Poynting
(2006) is forthright in his criticism of Australian media for ‘whipping up
hysteria’ in the week before the racial clash that involved around five
thousand people on Cronulla beach. Poynting believes the evidence is ‘clear
cut’ that the media incited a racial hate crime and cites the actions of the
tabloid paper Daily Telegraph as
conducting a ‘classic morally outraged campaign’ (Poynting, 2006). The article
goes on to reveal how radio and newsprint outlets continued to contribute to
the moral panic after the riots and how the government responded with a ‘law
and order’ auction (Poynting, 2006).
In response to constant
reporting which gives the consumer of daily news the impression that crime is
increasing, Governments have reacted to the induced moral panic by declaring
that they are tough on ‘law and order’. Macionis and Plummer describe this
heightened demand for tough law and order as ‘penal populism’ a ‘punitive
stance towards crime…that politicians can benefit from exploiting this belief’
(2012,pp602). Macionis and Plummer also argue that to maintain moral panic and
drive a penal populist belief requires ‘creating enemies, scapegoats and images
of threatening people, welfare scroungers, immigrants… a sense of a dangerous
world’ (2012p 602). The threat of
‘illegal immigrants’ is one of the current drivers for moral panic in
Australia.
One government reaction to get
tough on law and order is to support further installations of Closed Circuit
television (CCTV). The use of private and publicly funded CCTV according to
Macionis and Plummer has grown in intensity so that we now live in a
‘surveillance society’ (2012,pp597). CCTV gives a community a sense of safety;
even though it’s benefits are limited with the best results for crimes such as
car theft. Wilson and Sutton argue that CCTV is best suited to confined spaces
and the long term benefits in open street situations need to be measured
against displacement effects (Wilson and Sutton, 2004). Wilson and Sutton go on
to say that statistics on the number of surveillance cameras in Australia and
their effectiveness is lacking and needs to balance between being fit for
purpose and rights for privacy (2004). With so many cameras in operation both
publicly and privately we are assured of one thing-that there is more grist for
the media mill.
Crime statistics may relate to volume
not severity and once passed through the justice system may change. According
to the credible sources at BoCSaR and AIoC there has generally been a steady
decline in crime, however statistics do show an increase in assault. Even
though it may be difficult to show a completely definitive causal link between
the media and the population’s fear of crime there is enough prima facie
material to make a broad statement that Australia’s violent crime such as
assault is on the rise, but it is over amplified by the presence of
surveillance, the media’s insatiable appetite for ‘news’, moral panic and the
political response to penal populist belief which seems to create a
self-perpetuating loop. Other crime categories are on the decline but that
doesn’t sell ‘news’ or help reinforce moral panic.
References
Australian
Government Institute of Criminology 2012, Australian Crime: Facts and Figures 2011, http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf.
Gilliam FD Jr. and
Iyengar S, 2000, Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the
Viewing Public, American Journal of
Political Science, Vol 44, No 3, July 2000. Accessed online via JSTOR May
2013.
Macionis JJ and
Plummer K, 2012, Sociology, A Global
Introduction (5th Edition), Pearson Education Limited, England,
UK.
NSW Bureau of
Crime Statistics and Research, Issue paper number 84, April 2013, An update of
long-term trends in property and violent crime in New South Wales: 1990-2012, http://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Lawlink/bocsar/ll_bocsar.nsf/vwFiles/BB84.pdf/$file/BB84.pdf
Poynting, S 2006 What caused the Cronulla riot? In Race and Class, Vol48 Issue 1, pp 85-92 7/2006 accessed online via
Sage journals, May 2013.
Williams P and
Dickinson J, 1993, Fear of Crime: Read all about it? The Relationship between Newspaper
Crime Reporting and Fear of Crime. British
Journal of Criminology, Vol 33 No1, Winter 1993
Wilson D and
Sutton A, 2004, Watched Over or Over Watched? Open Street CCTV in Australia, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology,
Vol37 No 2, 2004, pp211-230
