Over a million cases of household property damage in Australia

Australian households experienced approximately 1.6 million incidents of malicious property damage according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The ABS Crime Victimisation Survey found that 912,500 households in Australia were victims of at least one incident of property damage in a 12 month period.

Conducted in 2008-09, the survey asked Australians aged 15 and over whether they experienced a crime in the preceding 12 months for a selected range of personal and household offences including; physical assault, threatened assault, robbery, break-in, attempted break-in, motor vehicle theft, theft from a motor vehicle, malicious property damage and other theft.

More than half a million Australians aged 15 years and over reported they were a victim of at least one physical assault in the 12 months preceding the survey. An estimated 321,300 men aged 15 years and over experienced at least one physical assault, compared to 206,100 women of the same age.

The ABS also found that, for the most recent incident of physical assault, just over three-quarters of female victims knew the offender, and nearly half occurred in the home. In contrast, just over half of male victims knew the offender, and less than one in five males indicated they were physically assaulted in the home.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics