Recorded drug use and possession crime in metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria, 2006-2015Paul Sutherland and Melanie Millsteed

This paper examines the rise in drug use and possession incidents recorded by police across Victoria over the past ten years. By exploring two separate geographical breakdowns, it is possible to see which parts of the state are making the largest contributions to the increase. The paper finds the largest increases occurred across regional urban areas, although there were also increases in metropolitan Melbourne and rural areas over the past five years. There was also a shift in the proportion of incidents that occurred in public locations, although this trend varied across Victoria. While the majority of offenders across the state were male, in metropolitan, rural and many regional areas there has been an increasing proportion of female offenders. While there has been much attention placed on the rise in drug use and possession offending in recent years, it is important to consider the findings in this report may be as much a reflection of police activity as increased prevalence of drug offending across a growing proportion of Victoria’s population.

Keywords: trends, drug use and possession, recorded crime, offender characteristics, regional breakdown, Melbourne, regional Victoria, rural Victoria

Introduction

Recent research published by the Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) has identified that over the past decade there have been significant increases in the volume and rate of drug use and possession offences and alleged offenders recorded in Victoria. While the rate of these increases has slowed somewhat since 2013, an average annual percentage increase of 14.2% in the offence rate and 10.1% in the unique offender rate was recorded over the past five years (Millsteed and McDonald, 2015). The causes of these increases are unclear, though significant media coverage has been given to concerns about a perceived rise in the use of crystal methamphetamine over the past two years, particularly in regional Victoria (see for example: Spooner, 2014; Moor, 2014).

It has previously been suggested that the historical disparities that existed between rates of drug use in metropolitan areas of Australia compared with regional and rural areas (whereby drug use was significantly higher in cities) had all but disappeared by the end of the twentieth century (Bull, 2007). A Victorian study conducted twenty years ago found no statistically significant differences in the incidence of drug use between Melbourne and a regional area around the town of Warrnambool, although there were some differences in both type of drug used and subsequent health consequences (Aitken, Brough and Crofts, 1999). More recently, a study found young rural students in Victoria were more likely to engage in substance use than their urban counterparts (Coomber et al., 2011). Further, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, last conducted in 2013, found that across Australia people living in remote and very remote areas were more likely to have used an illicit drug in the past 12 months than those living in major cities and inner regional areas (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014). A recent analysis of Victorian drug-related ambulance attendance data found that for some drug types, rates were higher in metropolitan areas than in regional areas, but the opposite was the case for other drug types (Lloyd et al., 2015).

In late 2014, the Inquiry into the supply and use of methamphetamines, particularly ice, in Victoria, noted that overall “there is very little data that gives specific information on drug use patterns and prevalence within rural and regional Victoria”. The Inquiry recommended that recorded crime data relating to illicit drug use be improved, “particularly in metropolitan, local, regional and remote locations” (Law Reform, Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee, 2014). Though it is acknowledged that recorded crime data can only outline differences in the prevalence of drug use and possession rates that come to the attention of police, this paper will use recorded crime data to begin to address the information gap identified by the Inquiry. Understanding the geographic distribution of recorded drug use is also crucial to planning drug treatment services, as coming into contact with the criminal justice system can be one key pathway into treatment.

This paper will also consider whether the observed increase in drug use and possession offences recorded in Victoria over the past decade may be related to increases in a particular geographic area, or to increased visibility of drug use and possession (i.e., increased drug use in public places). This was one of a number of potential drivers of observed increases previously suggested by Millsteed and McDonald (2015).

Aims of the current study

This paper is the second in a series of CSA research publications that examines drug use and possession crime in Victoria (for the first, see: Millsteed and McDonald, 2015). The specific research questions this paper will seek to address include:

What are the rates of drug use and possession offences in metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria and how have these rates changed over time?

In terms of location types (e.g. residential, public places), where do offences occur? Does this differ across metropolitan, regional and/or rural Victoria?

Do the characteristics of drug use and possession offenders differ across metropolitan, regional and/or rural areas?

Method

Data

This research draws on data about all drug use and possession incidents and offenders recorded by Victoria Police in their Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) database over a ten year period, beginning on 1 July 2005. This means the years referred to in this report range from the year ending 30 June 2006 (referred to as 2006) through to 30 June 2015 (referred to as 2015).

Because the CSA does not receive data on court outcomes associated with offences, references to offences and offenders in this paper refer to alleged rather than proven offences and offenders.

Two different counting units are used in this report: use and possession incidents and unique offenders. Use and possession incidents are the number of occasions on which each offender was recorded by police for at least one drug use and possession offence. A unique offender is an individual person who has been recorded for at least one use and possession incident in the relevant reference period. Because only data from 2006 onwards is included in this analysis, some offenders who appear as new or first-time offenders (especially early in the time series) may in fact have been recorded for a drug use or possession offence prior to 2006. As a result, data on first-time offenders relating to the earlier years in this sample should be interpreted with caution. In sections of this paper that refer to unique offenders, the analysis is based either on unique offenders over each of the last five years (2011 to 2015), or the sum of all unique offenders over the past 10 years.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between the two counting units and how these counting units relate to individual offences. The diagram represents one unique offender, with two drug use and possession incidents (recorded by police on two separate occasions), each of which involved at least one drug use and possession offence. For incidents involving more than one unique offender, a use and possession incident is counted for each offender. For example, a case where two offenders are recorded as possessing a drug at the same time will be counted as two use and possession incidents and two unique offenders.

Figure 1: Counting unit definitions

Geographic breakdowns

To enable comparisons of the prevalence and incidence of drug use and possession crimes across metropolitan, regional, and other areas of Victoria, this report utilises two distinct geographical breakdowns: the Significant Urban Area or SUA breakdown and the Metropolitan Regional Rural or MRR breakdown. Both breakdowns draw on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Significant Urban Area (SUA) geography structure, which contains both clustered urban areas (including greater Melbourne) and a ‘Not in a significant urban area’ category1 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). The SUA breakdown is used to examine crimes that occurred in greater Melbourne; in each of the clustered urban areas outside of greater Melbourne individual; and, in the ‘Not in a significant urban area’ category. The MRR breakdown uses the Melbourne SUA to represent ‘metropolitan areas’, groups the remaining clustered urban areas to represent ‘regional areas’, and uses the ‘Not in a significant urban area’ category to represent rural Victoria.

ABS estimated resident population figures were used to calculate rates of crime per 100,000 population across both geographic breakdowns. Three regional SUAs sit across state borders (Albury-Wodonga, Echuca-Moama, and Mildura-Wentworth), but the vast majority of drug use and possession crime recorded by Victoria Police in those areas is crime that occurs in Victoria. Table 1 shows the relationships between the two geographical breakdowns, along with relevant 2014 population estimates, while Figure 2 shows these breakdowns on a map of Victoria. Note

1 Postcode data is available as part of an incident record – they refer to where the event in question took place. The postcode data can then be aggregated up to SUA level using ABS concordances (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012)

that two pairs of neighbouring SUAs have been combined due to small sizes and/or a small number of drug use and possession incidents: Drysdale-Clifton Springs and Ocean Grove-Point Lonsdale, and Bacchus Marsh and Melton. This means there are a total of 20 individual regional SUAs used for this analysis.

Table 1: List of Significant Urban Areas in Victoria2

Breakdown 1 (SUA) Breakdown 2 (MRR)

SUA name Population estimate (2014) MRR name Population estimate (2014)

Melbourne 4,269,138 Metropolitan Areas 4,269,138

Bacchus Marsh

Bairnsdale

Ballarat

Bendigo

Colac

Drysdale-Clifton Springs

Echuca

Geelong

Gisborne-Macedon

Horsham

Melton

Mildura

Moe-Newborough

Ocean Grove-Point Lonsdale

Sale

Shepparton-Mooroopna

Torquay

Traralgon-Morwell

Wangaratta

Warragul-Drouin

Warrnambool

Wodonga

19,446

13,927

98,543

91,692

11,939

12,402

14,611

184,182

19,508

16,327

56,894

43,777

16,416

24,546

14,705

49,079

17,554

40,851

18,117

32,698

33,856

38,131

Regional Areas 869,201

Not in any significant urban area (Vic.)

703,328 Rural Areas 703,328

Victoria 5,841,667 Victoria 5,841,667

2 ABS estimates for the year ending June 2015 have not been published yet. 2015 population estimates for the state of Victoria are available from the Victoria in Future project and have been used to estimate individual SUA populations for 2015 (Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, 2015).

Figure 2: Map of Victoria showing metropolitan, regional and rural areas

Location types

As well as a geographic location, police records include a location type variable, which specifies where the offence was recorded to have occurred. The broadest classification level for location type data (known as location division) is divided into the following four categories:

Residential, which includes homes as well as yards, sheds and hotels and motels; Community, which includes public places like streets, footpaths and parks, as well as more specific

locations like education facilities, train or bus stations or stops; Other, which includes a wide range of locations including banks, retail outlets, farmland, cinemas,

construction sites and sports facilities; Unknown, which includes incidents with unknown or unrecorded locations.

This report groups the ‘community’ and ‘other’ categories, to enable a closer examination of how much offending occurs in public places, and whether or not the proportion of offences occurring in this combined category has changed over the past five years across geographical categories. For example, if the analysis identified an increase in drug use and possession incidents in a particular SUA over the same time period as an increase in the proportion of incidents occurring in community/other locations within that SUA, this could suggest either increased visibility of offending, or increased police activity in public places.

Statistical tests

Two statistical tests are used in this report. Kendall’s rank-order correlation coefficient was applied to the monthly

use and possession incident rates and unique offender rates over two, five and ten year periods to identify whether any observed movements in the data represent statistically significant trends. Chi-square analyses (indicated by the symbol: χ2) were also used to examine whether there were any significant differences between groups of offenders, for example, people who offended in metropolitan areas compared with people who offended in regional areas.

Results

Drug use and possession incidents in metropolitan, regional, and rural Victoria

Between 1 July 2005 and 30 June 2015, 99.98% (n=105,532) of all recorded drug use and possession incidents had offence location details recorded. Table 2 shows the number and proportion of drug use and possession incidents across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria that were recorded in each year over the ten year period.

Table 2: Number and proportion of drug use and possession incidents in metropolitan, regional and rural

Victoria, 2006 – 2015

Metropolitan Regional Rural Total VictoriaYear ending June n % n % n % n %

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

5,514

5,878

6,086

6,449

6,592

6,962

8,586

9,882

9,947

11,885

71.9

72.3

72.6

73.4

73.8

76.0

76.4

75.4

72.7

72.3

1,330

1,445

1,423

1,367

1,410

1,431

1,759

2,203

2,603

3,190

17.3

17.8

17.0

15.6

15.8

15.6

15.6

16.8

19.0

19.4

824

809

873

967

929

764

901

1,022

1,132

1,369

10.7

9.9

10.4

11.0

10.4

8.3

8.0

7.8

8.3

8.3

7,668

8,132

8,382

8,783

8,931

9,157

11,246

13,107

13,682

16,444

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

Total 77,781 73.7 18,161 17.2 9,590 9.1 105,532 100

As shown, over the past ten years the number of drug use and possession incidents has increased in all three geographic areas. This rise has not been constant, with much of the increase coming in the past five years (up almost 80%, from 9,157 recorded in 2011 to 16,444 recorded in 2015). At the same time, the proportional split of incidents across geographies has changed. In particular, the proportion of incidents recorded in regional areas has increased, from 15.6% in 2011 to 19.4% in 2015. This is an indication of increasing prevalence of recorded drug offending in Victoria’s regional towns and cities, which is occurring at a faster rate than in both metropolitan and rural areas. The proportion of drug use and possession incidents in metropolitan areas has dropped slightly, from 76.0% in 2011 to 72.3% in 2015, while incidents in rural areas have remained relatively consistent over the past five years, at around 8%.

Rates per 100,000 population enable a clearer comparison of trends across locations, as they remove the impact of population size and growth. Figure 3 shows the rate of drug use and possession incidents over the past decade for the MRR breakdown. Again, it highlights the increase in recorded drug use and possession incidents across all geographies, particularly over the past five years. Again, the rise in regional incidents is the most notable, rising from 173 incidents per 100,000 population in 2011 to 361 in 2015 (an increase of 109.0%). Similar, although smaller increases were reported in both metropolitan (173 offences in 2011 to 273 in 2015, an increase of 57.3%) and rural (up 76.2% from 110 offences in 2011 to 194 in 2015) areas.

Figure 3: Rate of drug use and possession incidents in metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria, 2006 – 2015

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 20150

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Metro Regional Rural Total

Rate

per

100

,000

popu

latio

n

Table 3 provides the results of statistical trend tests for the three geographic breakdowns. The noticeable increase in recorded incidents in regional areas is highlighted by the 16.2% average annual percentage increase over the past five years, compared to 10.6% for metropolitan, and 8.7% for rural. With the exception of the rate of rural incidents over the past two years, all areas had statistically significant increasing trends over the past two, five, and ten year periods.

Table 3: Two, five and ten year trends in monthly incidents for metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria

Metropolitan Regional Rural

TrendAverage annual % change

Significance (p)

Trend

Average annual

% change

Significance (p)

TrendAverage annual % change

Significance (p)

2 year trend (2014 – 2015)

Increased - 0.0001 Increased - 0.0240 Stable -Not

significant

5 year trend (2011 – 2015)

Increased 12.3% <.0001 Increased 20.3% <.0001 Increased 15.3% <.0001

10 year trend (2006 – 2015)

Increased 7.0% <.0001 Increased 8.9% <.0001 Increased 5.9% 0.0001

Drug use and possession incidents in Significant Urban Areas

By differentiating between the 21 largest urban areas in Victoria (including Melbourne) using the SUA classification, it was possible to examine further the prevalence of drug use across regional locations in 2015, and what areas, specifically, have been driving the large increases observed over the past five years.

Figure 4 shows the rate of drug use and possession incidents across SUAs in Victoria for 2015. The highest rates were generally reported in smaller SUAs, with the four highest rates all in SUAs with estimated populations under 20,000. The highest was reported in Gisborne-Macedon, with 1,743 incidents per 100,000 population, followed by Horsham (967 incidents), Moe-Newborough (827 incidents) and Sale (647 incidents). In terms of rate per 100,000 across SUAs, Ballarat was the highest ranked SUA with a population of over 50,000 people, ranked at fourteenth with

321 offences per 100,000 population. Melbourne had a rate of 273 offences per 100,000 population in 2015, while rural areas recorded 194 offences per 100,000 population.

Figure 4: Drug use and possession incident rate per 100,000 population by Significant Urban Area, July

2014 to June 2015

Table 4 shows the incident rate by SUA for both 2011 and 2015, and the percentage change between the two years. In addition to the overall rates for metropolitan Melbourne and rural Victoria, the fifteen regional SUAs with the largest percentage increases across the two years are shown3. These SUAs are the largest contributors to the overall increases in number of incidents observed across all regional areas. Again, the smaller SUAs generally reported greater increases, with those with a population of less than 20,000 ranked first (Gisborne-Macedon, up 309.7%), third (Moe-Newborough, up 233.7%) and fourth (Sale, up 192.1%). A large recent increase in incidents reported, coupled with a small population base has meant the rates in some of the smaller SUAs have increased dramatically. Of the state’s largest cities, Geelong and Bendigo ranked in the top ten (up 127.3% and 119.8% respectively), while metropolitan Melbourne recorded a 57.3% increase from 2011 to 2015. There was a 76.2% increase in rural Victoria.

3 SUAs with a rate of less than 100 offences per 100,000 population in 2011 were excluded from the list of top fifteen SUAs, and were instead included as part of ‘Rest of regional Victoria.’

Table 4: Top fifteen regional SUAs contributing to increases in drug use and possession incidents between

2011 and 2015

Rates per 100,000 populationGeographic breakdown 2011 2015 Percentage change (%)

Metropolitan Melbourne

Rural Victoria

173.5

109.8

273.0

193.5

+57.3

+76.2

Significant Urban Area (regional)

1. Gisborne-Macedon

2. Warragul-Drouin

3. Moe-Newborough

4. Sale

5. Traralgon-Morwell

6. Echuca

7. Bairnsdale

8. Horsham

9. Geelong

10. Bendigo

11. Ballarat

12. Warrnambool

13. Torquay

14. Shepparton-Mooroopna

15. Mildura

Rest of regional Victoria

425.4

142.0

247.7

221.6

201.9

139.2

200.6

416.2

107.6

119.1

154.1

181.7

193.6

279.6

348.0

137.0

1,743.0

478.0

826.5

647.3

575.6

389.0

532.6

966.7

244.5

261.7

320.7

374.3

340.9

486.5

482.0

137.6

+309.7

+236.7

+233.7

+192.1

+185.0

+179.5

+165.5

+132.2

+127.3

+119.8

+108.1

+106.0

+76.1

+74.0

+38.5

+0.4

Victoria (overall) 165.4 276.6 +67.3

Changes in the location of drug use and possession incidents in Significant Urban Areas

Table 5 examines the increases in drug use and possession rates across Victoria over the past five years further, by looking at the proportion of unique incidents that occurred in community/other locations in both 2011 and 2015. An increase in the proportion suggests that the increase in rates could potentially be explained by increased offending in public places, increased police activity regarding drug use and possession in public places, or a combination of both. The fifteen SUAs with the largest percentage changes in overall rates between 2011 and 2015 (as listed in Table 4) are provided, along with metropolitan Melbourne and rural Victoria. In Table 5, the SUAs are ranked by the percentage of all incidents that occurred in community/other locations in 2015. The significance column provides the significance levels for chi square tests that were used to examine whether there was a statistical relationship between location type (community/other versus residential) and year (2011 versus 2015). Incidents where the location type was unknown (around 10 percent of all incidents) have been excluded from this analysis.

For six of the fifteen regional SUAs listed, metropolitan Melbourne, and rural Victoria, there was a statistically significant relationship between location type and year, whereby the proportion of incidents that occurred in community/other locations was significantly different in 2015 than it was in 2011. However, in three of these the proportion of community/other incidents actually decreased (Geelong, from 74.7% in 2011 to 62.9% in 2015, Horsham, from 80.7% to 57.6%, and Sale, from 88.5% to 47.7%). Sale was the only SUA in 2015 where the proportion of incidents in residential locations was higher than in the community/other breakdown (52.3% of incidents occurred

in residential locations). The three regional SUAs that experienced significant increases in community/other locations from 2011 to 2015 were Gisborne-Macedon (from 60.6% to 77.2%), Mildura (from 43.6% to 59.7%), and Ballarat (from 48.7% to 64.8%). Statistically significant increases in the proportion of incidents recorded in community/other locations were also found for metropolitan Melbourne (from 79.6% to 81.8%) and rural Victoria (from 57.5% to 62.9%). Unsurprisingly, the proportional increase in incidents in community/other locations for all Victoria (from 75.1% in 2011 to 76.8% in 2015) is affected heavily by the metropolitan Melbourne increase, which in 2015 had a higher proportion of incidents occurring in these location types than any regional SUA or rural Victoria.

Table 5: Change in the proportion of drug use and possession incidents occurring in community/other location

categories between 2011 and 2015, by SUA

Geographic breakdownCommunity/Other Incidents (2011)

n

Percent of all incidents (2011)

%

Community/Other Incidents (2015)

n

Percent of all incidents (2015)

%

Significance

Metropolitan Melbourne

Rural Victoria

4,905

391

79.6

57.5

8,814

795

81.8

62.9

<.001

0.021

Significant Urban Area (regional)

1. Gisborne-Macedon

2. Torquay

3. Moe-Newborough

4. Shepparton-Mooroopna

5. Traralgon-Morwell

6. Warrnambool

7. Ballarat

8. Geelong

9. Bendigo

10. Echuca

11. Mildura

12. Horsham

13. Warragul-Drouin

14. Bairnsdale

15. Sale

Rest of regional Victoria

43

13

23

78

34

36

58

124

57

15

58

46

22

16

23

111

60.6

56.5

69.7

65.6

54.8

72.0

48.7

74.7

63.3

79.0

43.6

80.7

57.9

69.6

88.5

58.7

247

39

77

148

135

78

180

248

135

30

120

83

75

37

41

152

77.2

72.2

68.1

66.7

66.5

65.6

64.8

62.9

62.5

62.5

59.7

57.6

52.1

52.1

47.7

66.7

0.004

Not significant

Not significant

Not significant

Not significant

Not significant

0.003

0.007

Not significant

Not significant

0.004

0.002

Not significant

Not significant

<.001

Not significant

Victoria (overall) 6,053 75.1 11,434 76.8 0.004

Drug use and possession first time offenders in metropolitan, regional, and rural Victoria

Of the 67,889 unique drug use and possession offenders recorded by the Victoria Police between 2006 and 2015, 81.3% (n=55,209) were male. This percentage varies across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria (see Table 6), with a significantly higher proportion of male offenders in metropolitan areas (82.2%) compared to regional (78.4%) and rural areas (80.3%). There was also variation across age groups (age data was collected for 99.2% of all offenders), with offenders in metropolitan areas more likely to be between the ages of 20 and 29 at the time of their first recorded offence compared to regional and rural offenders. Conversely, regional and rural offenders were more likely to be over 40 at the time of their first recorded offence compared with metropolitan offenders.

Table 6: Sex and age of first time offenders in metropolitan, regional, and rural Victoria, 2006-2015

Metropolitan Regional Rural Significance

n % n % n % p

Sex

Male

Female

39,679

8,575

82.2

17.8

9,789

2,694

78.4

21.6

5,741

1,411

80.3

19.7

<.00014

Total 48,254 100 12,483 100 7,152 100

Age at first offence

10 to 14

15 to 19

20 to 24

25 to 29

30 to 34

35 to 39

40 to 44

45 to 49

50 to 54

55 or older

467

9,361

12,940

8,490

6,137

4,469

3,033

1,703

765

528

1.0

19.6

27.0

17.7

12.8

9.3

6.3

3.6

1.6

1.1

228

2,487

3,010

2,026

1,521

1,257

877

529

295

182

1.8

20.0

24.3

16.3

12.3

10.1

7.1

4.3

2.4

1.5

119

1,194

1,609

1,035

936

822

630

363

236

151

1.7

16.8

22.7

14.6

13.2

11.6

8.9

5.1

3.3

2.1

<.00015

Total 47,893 100 12,412 100 7,095 100

In addition to differences across geographical regions, there were also changes in the characteristics of first time offenders over time, particularly in relation to the sex of first time offenders. Figure 5 shows that over the past five years, females have made up an increasing proportion of first time offenders. This is especially the case in metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria. The sex breakdown in rural areas has been more variable over time.

Figure 5: Unique offenders by sex, metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria, July 2011 to June 2015

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015Metropolitan Regional Rural

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

83% 82% 82% 80% 78% 79% 79% 79% 76% 74% 79% 80% 78% 81% 76%

17% 18% 18% 20% 22% 21% 21% 21% 24% 26% 21% 20% 22% 19% 24%

Male Female

4 χ2=100.6, p<.0001, df=2, Cramer’s V = 0.045 χ2=521.3, p<.0001, df=18, Cramer’s V = 0.62

Table 7 provides further details on female first time offenders. While the proportion increased across the state (from 18.2% in 2011 to 22.6% in 2015 for all of Victoria), there were also statistically significant increases in the number of first time female offenders. The largest increase was recorded in regional Victoria, which had an average annual increase of 20.9%, followed by rural Victoria (15.4%) and metropolitan Melbourne (14.5%).

Table 7: Number and percentage of unique offenders who were female, metropolitan, regional and rural

Victoria, July 2011 to June 2015

Metropolitan Regional Rural Total VictoriaYear ending June n % n % n % n %

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

739

884

989

1,029

1,255

17.3

17.8

18.1

19.9

21.7

208

245

293

366

442

21.1

21.0

21.3

23.9

25.6

117

125

148

143

204

20.6

19.6

21.7

19.4

23.5

1,064

1,254

1,430

1,538

1,901

18.3

18.5

19.0

20.7

22.7

Average % change, 2011-2015 14.4 * 20.8 * 16.1 * 15.8 *

Statistical significance (5 year trend)

<.0001 * <.0001 * 0.003 * <.0001 *

Total (2011-2015) 4,896 19.1 1,554 22.9 737 21.1 7,187 20.0

* Statistical test not conducted on proportion data.

While the proportion of female offenders in 2015 was highest in regional Victoria (25.6%), Figure 6 shows that in the latest year there was a wide range in the proportion of female offenders across regional SUAs. The proportion of female offenders was over 30% in three SUAs (Mildura, Horsham, and Shepparton-Mooroopna), in sharp contrast to four SUAs which had a proportion of less than 20% (Warrnambool, Bairnsdale, Wangaratta and Colac). The proportions for Melbourne (21.7%) and rural Victoria (23.5%) have both increased by a statistically significant amount in the past five years.

Figure 6: Proportion of first time offenders who were female, by Significant Urban Area, July 2014 to June

2015

DiscussionRates of drug use and possession incidents as recorded by Victoria Police have increased across metropolitan, regional and rural areas over the past ten years. There are particularly noticeable increases over the past five years in regional Victoria, with these areas now reporting a rate almost a third higher than the other two geographical categories. In some way this reaffirms current concerns voiced by both government and media about the rate of drug use in Victoria’s smaller towns and rural areas (for examples see comments made by: Law Reform, Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee the Parliament of Victoria, 2014; and The Age, 2015).

However, it should be noted that police statistics are not necessarily an accurate measure of the underlying incidence of offending, and instead may be more reflective of police activity. The largest increases in drug use and possession rates in Victoria are in Significant Urban Areas with small populations, such as Gisborne-Macedon, Horsham, Moe-Newborough, and Sale. For these places, a small population base means any increase in police recorded incidents will affect the overall rate to a greater extent than increases in larger cities and towns. An increase in the number of police, or a change in their focus, can therefore have a substantial effect on rates.

As suggested by Millsteed and McDonald (2015), increases may in part be driven by an increase in the proportion of drug use and possession unique incidents occurring in community locations suggesting that these crimes are becoming more visible to police. Though this theory may hold in certain parts of the state including rural areas and metropolitan Melbourne, the analysis presented here did not find consistent increases in the proportion of incidents

recorded in community/other locations across all regional towns and cities. Additional research is required to further explore this hypothesis, and to identify other drivers of recorded drug use and possession increases.

Across Victoria, the characteristics of offenders has changed somewhat over time. Whereas in 2011 around 18% of all first time drug use and possession offenders were female, by 2015 this had increased to over 22%. This varies slightly across Victoria and in regional areas the proportion of females has increased to over 25%. The National Drug Strategy Household Survey report stated that as of 2013 there was no change in the prevalence of male and female self-reported recent illicit drug use in Australia when compared to the previous survey in 2010 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014). However, breakdowns of the sex of drug users by geographic locations were not provided in the survey report and as a result it is not possible to determine whether the increased proportion of female offenders in metropolitan and regional Victoria found in this research is in any way reflective of increased drug use amongst females in these locations.

In response to the key themes identified in the Crime Statistics Agency’s Research Agenda 2015 – 17 (Crime Statistics Agency, 2015), this short report is the second in a series looking at drug use and possession offences in Victoria. A number of topics have been identified for future papers in this series, including:

Drug type, with a particular focus on the prevalence of methamphetamine; Other types of offending behaviour amongst those recorded for drug use and possession offences; and, The impact of police actions on drug use and possession offending.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kimberley Shirley, who provided the data for this project, as well as Fiona Dowsley for providing useful feedback. Thanks are also extended to Chantelle Miller from Victoria Police for reviewing the final draft.

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Authorised and published by the Crime Statistics Agency, 121 Exhibition Street, Melbourne. ISSN: 2205-6378This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 International License. When reporting CSA data and publications, you must attribute the Crime Statistics Agency (or CSA) as the source. If you would like to receive this publication in an accessible format such as large print or audio, telephone 03 8684 1808 or email info@crimestatistics.vic.gov.au This document is also available in Word format at www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au