Homicides Rates Slash, Bringing in a Safer Country

Data are showing that the latest homicide rate in Australia is the country’s second-lowest in more than 30 years with numbers far below the world average homicide rate, making the land down under one of the safer places to live.

Crime statistics overall began to decline in 2001, and by 2018, “rates of the most common forms of crime had fallen between 40 and 80% and were lower than they’d been in twenty or in some cases thirty years,” explain Criminologists and authors Don Weatherburn and Sara Rahman.

According to the National Homicide Monitoring Program – the only national data collection program for homicide incidents, victims, and offenders compiling national statistics since 1989 – in 2020-2021, there were 210 homicide incidents, 263 identified offenders, 221 homicide victims, and only nine incidents involving multiple victims. The homicide rate went from 1.88 per 100,000 people in 1992-1993 to 0.82 in 2020-2021, a 55% decrease over 30 years. In comparison, the world average homicide rate went from 6.1 per 100,000 people in 2017 to 17.2 per 100,000 people in 2019. Overall, crime is in decline across the country with physical assaults down 39% from 2008-2009, face-to-face threatened assaults down 44%, and robberies down 50%.