The cutting edge of fear

LAW and order across the nation is not primarily a federal government responsibility - yet - but that does not deter leaders on the hustings in search of issues that attract the attention of voters. Tony Abbott, for example.

A few weeks ago, when he was temporarily between bicycle rides, the Opposition Leader detoured to Melbourne's outer suburbs with his frontbench colleague Tony Smith, the member for Casey.

The Liberals were out in Croydon promoting the virtue of closed-circuit television cameras in reducing petty crime in shopping centres. During the 2007 election campaign, the then Howard government had a grant program to help local communities install such cameras in areas seen as high risk.

One of the good news stories across Australia is that crime rates overall are falling or have stabilised. The bad news, however, is that for serious crimes that usually threaten individuals, such as robbery, assault and sexual assault, the long-term trends have been increasing since the mid-1990s.

Smith happens to be the Coalition's communications and digital economy spokesman. As the local MP, he spoke about a 70 per cent reduction in crime in nearby Lilydale and how, before the CCTV cameras, local traders were paying for security guards.

Abbott told the gathering of police officers, community representatives and reporters: "I'm a little disappointed that the Rudd government didn't continue the [Howard grant] program. The Rudd government doesn't have a dedicated program for things like closed circuit TV for community safety purposes. This certainly is something that I'm looking at as we finalise our policies in the run-up to the election.

"The point about these cameras is . . . you turn the camera on, you turn the crime off. I think that's what people want: they want safe streets, they want safe neighbourhoods, they want safe shopping centres, and if you want the safety you need the cameras."

Abbott took a similar message to Stirling in Perth this week.

Voters, particularly older ones, keep telling their MPs they are worried about personal safety and CCTV cameras are a small-scale way in which Canberra can be seen as addressing the problem of crime, simple-minded as it is. The other heartland issue in the previous campaign was "hooning" and the cameras were seen as a way of nabbing these young, heavy-footed rev-heads. Expect to hear the "tough on hoons line" as Coalition MPs door-knock their way through an election year.

From Labor's point of view, the government is buying into the law and order debate through its traditional strength of health. The Rudd government's sideways move into this space has been its assault, if you will, on "the scourge of teenage binge drinking".

Certainly Kevin Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon have used this bogey to increase the tax on so-called "alcopops", to speak with feeling on safety, to do some social engineering and to promote public health more generally.

According to the latest statistical study by Canberra's Australian Institute of Criminology, there was a 49 per cent rise in assaults between 1996 and 2008. Adjusted for population increase, the rate of recorded assaults has been climbing steadily: from 623 assaults per 100,000 to a high of 840 in 2007. It dropped by 5 per cent to 796 in 2008.

The rate for robbery, according to the AIC, peaked in 2001. Since then it has fallen by 44 per cent to 77 per 100,000 a year, the lowest rate recorded since the series began in 1996.

From a recent high of two per 100,000 in 1999, the homicide rate has dropped to 1.4. But the rate for recorded sexual assault appears to be on an upward trend, from 80 to 92 persons per 100,000 since 1996.

The long-term picture for violent crime is pretty consistent across the country, although different jurisdictions have different methods of reporting and cataloguing crimes; from time to time there are spikes in various crimes across the country because of changes in policing, record keeping and the willingness of victims to report crimes. One catastrophic incident, such as the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, can change the base line and the conversation.

In NSW, where there is a longer and more consistent statistical series, since 1990 there has been a significant downward trend in the murder rate, but a dramatic upward trend in the assault rate (up 92 per cent).

Has violence in the most populous state really increased by that much? Or is it that victims are likelier to now report assaults? Both, in fact.

A research bulletin last year by Clare Ringland and Joanne Baker of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research looked at police reports, crime victim surveys and hospital records. It found that from 1995 to 2007, rates of assault increased for both males and females, for all age groups, for different types of assault, in all geographic areas and premise types. "These trends in police-recorded assault, supported by increases in hospitalisation and victim survey data, suggest a real increase in violence," they wrote.

But given that less serious assaults had increased at a greater rate than serious assaults and that the increase in hospitalisation for assault was small compared with the police data and victims statements, Ringland and Baker also concluded: "It's likely that the increase in assault was due not only to an increase in violence, but also to an increase in public awareness of assault and the increased willingness of victims and third parties to report, and/or police willingness to record, incidents as assault."

In Victoria, the number of so-called "crimes against the person" are on the rise and the clearance rate for these types of offences (mainly assault, robbery and sex other than statutory rape) has steadily fallen. Five years ago the clearance rate was 78.2 per cent. It is now 76.5 per cent. The number of victims of these crimes in Victoria has jumped by 16.5 per cent during this period.

In Queensland, after rising steadily during the 70s and 80s, the overall trend rate of assaults has stabilised since the mid-90s. In recent years, however, there has been a sharp rise in serious assaults (14 per cent in the past year alone) and also the rate at which young people are offending. In the mid-90s in that state, about 9 per cent of juvenile offences (aged 15 to 19) for males were for violence; it is now 14 per cent.

According Peter Homel, an AIC research manager, in the Anglosphere fear of crime in the community is essentially about being the target of personal violence.

"The fear of crime is fairly amorphous," he says.

"It's about people's feeling of safety in public places. The rise in assaults has reinforced that level of anxiety or discomfort. It then turns into a generalised sense that crime is out of control.

"When these two things come together, it makes it very difficult to deal with, even though the threat of violence for most people, especially older people, is quite remote. We know who is most likely to be assaulted and by whom: a young male." In social science now, there is a lot of reference to "the night-time economy". In Australia, many in the public health and crime studies sphere have observed a two-decade long deregulation in the entertainment-booze-inner-city complex.

There are more licensed venues, operating hours are longer, alcohol is cheaper and there is far more choice for the pleasure seeker. This is a good thing, of course, but it has come at a cost.

The link between alcohol and violent crime is reasonably simple to explain, although it is not strictly a matter of cause and effect according to Steve Allsop, director of the National Drug Research Institute at Perth's Curtin University.

"The context of drinking is all important," he says. "When it's 3am in an enclosed space full of young males who have been drinking for hours, clearly alcohol can exacerbate a risky situation.

"Alcohol is a passport to other risky behaviour."

Is alcohol-related violent crime on the rise? If you ask people on the frontline, police officers and emergency workers, they would say yes, without question. The community, too, firmly believes it. But the statistics aren't quite there yet. One of the best explanations about this dynamic comes from the director of the Institute for Social and Behavioural Research at Brisbane's Griffith University, Ross Homel (brother of the aforementioned Peter).

During testimony to a Queensland parliamentary inquiry into alcohol-related violence in February, he said: "What we do know is that there is reasonably reliable evidence that crimes of violence are increasing, particularly involving younger people. This has been of great interest to criminologists because it is the only category of crime that has continued to increase over the last few years. Most other categories have gone down over the last few years. We have actually been in a situation of overall reducing crime rates. But why not the violent crime?

"There is no argument that alcohol is one of the constant and significant ingredients in alcohol-related incidents. There is also no doubt that over the last 20 years there has been a fairly significant increase in accessibility. We know that, particularly among young people, patterns of consumption, particularly hazardous patterns of consumption have increased. We know that through national drug surveys."

In terms of law enforcement, the focal point around the country in trying to reduce the incidence of assault has been on alcohol and licensed premises, where authorities can exercise some leverage. Several studies, most recently by NDRI's Tanya Chikritzhs in Perth, have shown how extended trading hours have led to more violent assaults. Other work by Chikritzhs has shown that in the seven years to June 2001, there were 76,115 hospitalisations nationally as a result of alcohol-attributed violence.

Last December there was a two-day nationwide blitz against alcohol-related violence co-ordinated by police commissioners across the country under the banner of "Operation Unite". Police forces reported a surge in arrests and state leaders castigated drunken offenders and drink drivers. "I don't know what drives a lot of people in Western Australia to behave like yobbos and bogans," Premier Colin Barnett said during the operation. "Antisocial behaviour is not acceptable . . . what we're saying as a government is lift your game."

Says Jackie Fitzgerald, deputy director of the NSW BOCSAR: "In NSW, the focus has been on the alcohol-related side of assault. The police seem to have got a bit of traction. There's been a crackdown on licensed premises and we are starting to see the results of that. For the first time ever, in the September quarter last year, we saw in NSW a downward trend in non-domestic assaults. But it has since flattened."

A step change in the debate around assaults and alcohol came last December when BOCSAR released what has come to be widely viewed as a landmark study on what happens to violent crime when tough liquor trading restrictions are imposed. There is no study like it and the report will be continue to be scrutinised by its champions and detractors.

In March 2008, after complaints by the NSW Police Force against some venues (causing "undue disturbance of the quiet and good order of the neighbourhood"), the state Liquor Administration Board introduced significant restrictions on hotel trading hours for 14 hotels in the Newcastle CBD. Some of the restrictions were: a 1am lockout, bringing forward of closing time to 3am (for those that had 5am licences), prohibition on the sale of shots and similar mixed drinks after 10pm, prohibition on the sale of more than four drinks, ensuring there was no stockpiling of drinks, and employing a supervisor on the premises from 11pm with the sole purpose of monitoring responsible service of alcohol.

In the year that followed, the authors found that assaults after dark fell a staggering 29 per cent in Newcastle. Incidents of disorderly conduct fell 46 per cent. According to BOCSAR, almost 28 per cent of assaults in NSW occur between midnight and 3am on weekends.

The liquor industry lobby has pointed out that the Newcastle restrictions have come at a huge cost for local traders. The Australian Hotels Association has also questioned the data after crime-reporting anomalies were revealed in the Newcastle area police command. BOCSAR says the study period had concluded before the police-reporting irregularities became a problem, while the NSW Police says the problem has been corrected.

One of the study authors, Kyp Kypri, from the school of medicine and public health at the University of Newcastle, says the Keneally government in NSW has been shown conclusively what happens to violent crime when tight restrictions are imposed on pubs. "This study and its policy implications are big," he says, echoing another co-author, Craig Jones. "This is a very interesting case of how evidence is used in public policy. Here we have a clear case of good evidence and an obvious failure by the state government to act on that."

According to Griffith University's Ross Homel, author of Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity, deregulation in the retail liquor industry has had a devastating effect on public safety and health.

Explaining the cultural aspect of alcohol, NDRI's Allsop draws on a 1969 text called Drunken Comportment. "Societies get the drunken behaviour they are prepared to tolerate," says Allsop, quoting from the classic study.