Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 11—Crime and justice 483
in the first decade of the twentieth century). The
last execution in Australia was in 1967.
Homicide
Homicide covers offences of murder and
manslaughter. It is one offence for which data are
generally and consistently available. Nearly all
homicides are reported and police always
respond to homicide. Homicide has been part of
human behaviour and criminal codes for a long,
long time.
In 1915 in Australia, the homicide rate was 1.8 per
100,000 population. In 1998 it was 1.6 per
100,000. During the intervening years it hit a low
of 0.8 in 1941 and a high of 2.4 in 1988.
The annual homicide rates in Australia from 1915
to 1998 are displayed in graph C8.10 below.
There was a long-term decline during the first half
of the twentieth century, with the homicide rate
being the lowest during the period of World War
II (1939–1945). The rate then increased
substantially to a plateau of about 1.5 per 100,000
population in the 1950s and 1960s. An upward
trend occurred during the 1970s, reaching the
level of around 2.0 per 100,000 population at the
end of that decade. Since then, the rate has
remained relatively stable, except for two
temporary fluctuations in the 1980s. One of those
temporary fluctuations resulted in the highest
homicide rate recorded in Australia (rate of 2.4
per 100,000 population in 1988). This is more
than double the rate observed in 1950.
While there has been remarkable stability in
the twentieth century, and while the
differences among the States are negligible,
this has not always been the case. During the
first hundred years of settlement, homicide
rates were much higher and only fell to
‘modern’ levels after about 1880. Today there
is little difference in homicide rates between
any of the Australian States and Territories
(except the Northern Territory), but in 1900
Queensland and Western Australia had much
higher rates (by a factor of 3 to 10 times) than
the older States.
Australia’s current rate is similar to that of
many northern European countries and
Canada and New Zealand, but double that of
Japan, Norway and Ireland. The USA has a
rate about four times that of Australia, and
countries like Russia, Mexico and Croatia
have rates much higher than the USA. Why
this is so is a real mystery to criminologists,
anthropologists, psychiatrists and
psychologists. What is known, however, is
that homicide was a much less frequently
occurring activity in the twentieth century
than in previous centuries.
For the last decade of the century the
Australian Institute of Criminology has
monitored every homicide in Australia. The
dataset shows that homicide in Australia was
characterised by the following features.
C8.10 TRENDS IN HOMICIDE, Australia—1915 to 1998
Rate(a)
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
1915 1923 1932 1940 1949 1957 1966 1974 1983 1991 2000
(a) Rate per 100,000 population.
Source: Mouzos 2000, p. 9.