Australia Yearbook - 2001

472 Year Book Australia 2001
11.31 SENTENCED PRISONERS, By Most Serious Offence(a)—At 30 June 1999
NSW Vic. Qld SA WA Tas. NT ACT(b) Aust.
Offence Category
% % % % % % % % % no.
Homicide 7.1 12.1 10.6 12.3 7.4 14.2 9.5 11.3 9.1 1 667
Assault 12.9 5.2 14.6 11.3 11.1 6.9 22.9 16.6 12.1 2 212
Sex offences 9.7 14.9 15.6 8.0 14.4 11.6 6.9 10.6 12.2 2 239
Robbery 12.7 9.5 14.6 11.4 15.4 11.2 4.2 11.3 12.7 2 331
Break and enter 11.8 12.4 14.4 15.8 14.8 13.9 7.3 8.0 13.0 2 388
Fraud and misappropriation 4.5 3.4 3.4 9.0 2.4 1.0 0.7 4.6 3.9 723
Other theft 6.0 8.7 3.9 4.2 5.3 7.9 8.0 6.6 5.8 1 058
Government security(c) 12.4 12.4 4.7 8.5 7.6 15.8 4.0 9.3 9.6 1 756
Drug offences 10.8 11.7 7.6 8.1 6.8 1.7 2.7 11.9 9.1 1 663
Driving offences 6.5 0.3 2.7 2.1 3.9 5.0 11.0 3.3 4.3 780
Other offences 5.7 9.4 7.9 9.5 10.8 10.9 22.7 6.6 8.3 1 515
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 18 332
(a) The most serious offence is the offence with the longest sentence a prisoner has received. Where the sentences are equal, or
the longest sentence cannot be determined, the most serious offence is the offence with the lowest Australian Standard Offence
Classification (ASOC) code. (b) Prisoners sentenced to full-time custody in the ACT are held in NSW prisons and are also included
in the NSW figures. (c) Government security offences include offences such as treason; they also include offences against justice
procedures, such as perjury and resisting police.
Source: Prisoners in Australia, 1999—A report prepared for the Corrective Services Ministers’ Council by the National Correctional
Services Statistics Unit, ABS.
Aust.
Most serious offence
Table 11.31 shows the proportion of sentenced
prisoners by most serious offence for each State
and Territory at 30 June 1999. The most serious
offence is the offence for which prisoners have
received the longest sentence.
Nearly half (47%) of all sentenced prisoners were
convicted of offences involving violence or the
threat of violence, including murder (6%), other
homicide (3%), assault (12%), sex offences (12%),
other offences against the person (1%) and
robbery (13%). Sentenced prisoners convicted of
a property offence as their most serious offence
represented 24% of all sentenced prisoners,
including 13% sentenced for break and enter. A
further 9% were serving sentences for drug
offences as their most serious offence, and 4% of
the national proportion of sentenced prisoners
were convicted of driving offences as their most
serious offence.
There were differences in the types of offences
for which men and women were sentenced to
imprisonment, reflecting the differences in the
patterns of offending between men and women.
As shown in graph 11.32, a much higher
proportion of male prisoners (13%) than female
prisoners (1%) were convicted of sex offences,
while a higher proportion of female prisoners
than male prisoners were convicted of fraud and
misappropriation (11% and 4% respectively),
drug offences (12% for females compared with
9% for males) and government security/justice
procedure offences (13% for females compared
with 9% for males).
The most common offences for males in 1999
were break and enter (13%), sex offences (13%),
robbery (13%) and assault (12%). In the case of
female prisoners, nearly half (47%) of the most
serious offences were accounted for by four
categories: government security/justice
procedures offences (13%), assault (12%), fraud
and misappropriation (11%) and break and enter
(11%). While a higher proportion of males were
convicted of a violent offence, the proportion of
males and females who were convicted of
homicide offences were the same (9%).