Homicide in Australia 2000-2001 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) Annual Report

• NCJ Number: 195339
• Author(s): Jenny Mouzos
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 40 pages
• Corporate Author: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Annual/Periodic)
• Language: English
• Country: Australia
• Note: Australian Institute of Criminology Research and Public Policy Series No. 40

Annotation

This document presents the characteristics of homicide in Australia for the year 2000-2001.

Abstract

The data consist of two sources: offense records from each State and Territory police service, and State Coroner records, such as toxicology and post-mortem reports. The term homicide refers to all cases resulting in a person or persons being charged with murder or manslaughter, all murder-suicides classed as murder by the police and all other deaths classed by the police as homicides, even though no offender has been apprehended. Many of the characteristics associated with the incident, victim, and offender appear to have remained stable over the past 12 years. A total of 308 homicide incidents occurred in Australia. Of these homicides, 48 incidents remain unsolved. The majority of the solved homicide incidents resulted from one-on-one interactions between the victim and offender, with only seven incidents involving multiple victims. There were 46 incidents that involved multiple offenders. The data indicate that the incident was most likely to occur on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. This pattern was relatively consistent across all jurisdictions. Another consistent finding was that the majority of the incidents occur in a residential premise. Compared to 1999-2000, there has been a decrease in the number of victims of homicide. During 2000-2001, 317 homicide victims were recorded. The distribution of victims according to gender has remained stable, with males accounting for 61 percent of homicide victims, and females accounting for 39 percent. The mean age of homicide victims appears to be increasing. There appears to have been a shift in the victimization of elderly males. The majority of both male and female homicide victims were of Caucasian appearance. Most male and female victims of homicide did not consume alcohol or use illicit/prescription drugs at the time of the incident. There were a total of 333 offenders of homicide, most of them male. Gender was found to influence the type of victim-offender interaction. Male offenders were more likely to kill a friend or acquaintance; over half of all female offenders killed a person within their own family.10 footnotes, 16 references