The Vanishing Criminal

About our event

Rising crime seemed a permanent blight on everyday life 30 years ago, along with shock jocks, police corruption and the heroin epidemic. When recorded rates of crime began falling in 2001, few people believed it.

The fall in recorded crime rates continued for the next 20 years – affected every state and territory and showed up in successive national crime victim surveys. At least 16 different theories have been put forward to explain the fall in crime.

Professor Don Weatherburn will assess these theories against the available evidence and conclude that the drop is the result of a fortuitous change in the balance of factors pushing crime up and pulling crime down. 

In the 1980s and 90s, the forces pushing crime up in Australia included:

• an abundance of valuable and portable consumer goods
• limited household and vehicle security 
• a booming illicit drug market
• high levels of alcohol consumption among young people
• a large cash economy
• a low risk of apprehension
• widespread police corruption and incompetence

From 2001 onwards, the balance of forces began to tip in favour of falling crime. The heroin shortage was the turning point, but it was by no means the only important event in 2001.

Other factors include the mandatory installation of engine immobilisers, the establishment of a national DNA database, a fall in the percentage of males in the age group 16–24 began to shrink, regulatory constraints on the second-hand goods market, a growth in electronic funds transfer and changes in the market for stolen goods.

This seminar is the 2022 yearly address of Swinburne's Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science.

For more information, please call +61 3 9214 3887 or email info-cfbs@swinburne.edu.au.