Is Australia getting more violent?
Posted Friday, February 22, 2008, 3:07 PM by Lonely Planet
Many folks think of Australia as a pretty relaxed place, but a China-fuelled economic boom combined with a perceived rising wealth disparity has raised the stakes. A recent poll showed that 72% of Melburnians think their city is getting more violent.
Is crime the natural flip side of prosperity , or are we seeing ominous signs for Australia? Are Australian cities just naturally going to get more dangerous?
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13 Comments:
NO! Melbourne's the best fucking city in the best fucking country in the world. PEACE!
It is getting more Violent, but indicating its to do with the economy is been over simplisitic. The majority of the people making good money in australia are working in western australia, and they are usually tradesmen and skilled labourers (i.e. working class people).
I've read that the majority of reported assaults are happening on weekends and during the festive season, and alot of people believe ,particularly Police, that it is more to do with the change in receipe of ecstasty pills (MDMA) and the more common use/addiction of ICE (methamphetamine), on witch people can get extremly aggressive.
In my opinion its NOT the economy, the diaparity between the haves-and-have-nots have MUCH more to do with right wing polocie's of the former govermant than the economy.
I've lived in Sydney my entire life, both in the city and in the surrounding suburbs. My answer to this question is absolutely. Its come about gradually but things have been getting worse. me, my family and friends have hundreds of stories between us of close calls and dangerous situations. Having left a public western Sydney school a few years ago my feeling is that the rise in crime is linked to the lack of disipline in schools spilling into the streets. the obvious gap between rich and poor can't be helping either. that being said, Sydney is still a great place - just keep your common sense. a quote i read on this same website applies pretty well "if you can survive in the big city your flying out of, you'll survive in the city your flying into"
No. We have sensible gun laws - just lousy newspaper reporting nothing interesting.
Crime the natural flip side of poverty not prosperity! How violent is say Japan?
we were travelling for the year - my boyfriend was violently beaten up by bouncers in a back - packing pub on East Coast, not the first time it had happened there apparently - just that no backpacker seemed to take it any further with police etc cos they are moving on. We are currently in middle of trial.
Japan doesn't have much violent street crime, but there has been a rise in disturbing violent crime among young people.
On the flip-side, India is not the world's most prosperous nation (and there's a big gap between rich and poor), but it has really low violent street crime also. However, rates of domestic violence are thought to be quite high.
And yes, it's true that Australia has very little gun violence, but it's awfully simplisitic to equate violence only with gun violence.
Anecdotally, it does seem that violent crime in public (eg, on public transport) in Melbourne is beocming more prevalent.
It does seem likely that the divisive policies of the past decade have played a part in violence, but this is likely only a small part of the picture. That picture no doubt also includes economics, drugs, policing methods, etc. It would be interesting to see a Freakonomics-style approach to the question - the one thing that (somewhat shallow but interesting) book showed is that data can throw up unexpected and unintuitive correlations.
Good comments here. Perhaps it is simplistic to blame the violence on the economy. However, as the comment above suggests, street violence and poverty don't always go hand in hand (check out Nicaragua and Malaysia for some counterexamples).
I agree that blaming violence on economics is over simplistic; but I do, however, believe that Australia is getting more violent. I recently returned to Brisbane after living in England for eight years and was horrified by the level of angst and violence in Brisbane. Nearly every weekend you hear of someone who has been bashed so severely they are in hospital from their injuries. I am aware that violence occurs in all cities and in all countries, but I have to admit, the general male type here in Australia is aggressive and violent. I have no answer as to the reason why, but perhaps we have accepted it for too long as the "norm", and people just turn their heads and ignore it, rather than standing up to it and saying no.
Australia has always been a violent place,and always will be!
Possibly, but probably no more than anywhere else. Violence is part of life. Mostly it can be avoided, occasionally it can't.
I recently spent a year in Australia and saw a couple of scuffles in pubs, rode the odd insult, and had no real hassle, despite occasionally being pretty drunk and loose lipped.
My girlfriend's cousin was a cop in Sydney. Dealing with violence daily, he thought otherwise. But compared to London, where kids are stabbed to death on a weekly basis, dads are kicked to death in front of their families, and racially motivated attacks are frequent, Australia seems fairly benign.
But, not living there anymore, maybe it's got radically worse in the last couple of years...
Or maybe its only a return to the roots of the first (forced) inmigrants... ;-)
LOL, I love Australia...
As a Melbourne-based journo I might be biased, seeing more police press releases than most, but there certainly seems a rise in violence by gangs of young people against individuals. Young guys will always have some spare testosterone and bravado around, especially when alcohol's involved, but there seems to be more attacks 'just for kicks' in the past year or two, or to film and post on YouTube.
I hope it's just a phase and will pass, because I never used to worry about walking home alone at night, but now I think twice.
The problem with trying to assess a topic such as this is the media.
As time passes our technology for preventing crime becomes more advanced and our method of recording crime becomes more sophisticated.
Therefore I am not sure there is necessarily an increase in crime but an increase in the documentation of crime.
The problem with this is the glorification by youngsters amongst their peers of the less serious crimes. Hence the happy slapping crimes documented on mobile phones etc.
I would actually say that if you look at overall crime rates in Australia in percentages and factor in the increase of people and the increased potential to prevent and document crimes you would see a decrease.
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