Better at law and order in Victoria - Coalition or Labor?

Get the full report PDF

Executive summary

As Victorians head to the polls on November 24^th, a key topic on voters’ minds is law and order. It’s been found to be potentially the most important issue of the election.

The major contenders — the Coalition and Labor — have made claims and counter-claims about their performance on law and order. Yet it hasn’t been clear which claims are fair and true, which are exaggerations or even whoppers, and what voters haven’t been told.

To help voters make informed decisions, we conducted a structured professional analysis of policing and crime data using robust longitudinal data from authoritative sources, underpinned by appropriate statistical techniques. We crunched the numbers and tested the parties’ claims. We conducted further analyses to offer a more balanced and comprehensive perspective.

Misleading or false statements were apparent on both sides.

For example, Labor claimed that Victoria Police funding and police numbers were cut under the Coalition. While this may have been true for a specific brief period of the Coalition’s office, it is false overall.

Yet misinformation was more prevalent from the Coalition. For example, while the Coalition painted a “crisis” in law and order due to a claimed 10.5% rise in criminal offences under Labor, they didn’t report their own performance on the same measure (21.6% using their own method). Using valid statistics, we found rises in the overall offences rate of 1.7% under Labor and 12.1% under the Coalition.

Increased rates in specific offences had been promoted as indicators of overall performance. These claims were misleading because the selected offences while serious — for example aggravated burglary — represent tiny proportions of all offences. To create a fair and balanced review, we analysed the Coalition and Labor’s performance-in-government (as net changes in offence rates) against the top ten offences categories. The top ten comprise 90.3% of all offences, so results are generally representative of overall performance.

Labor’s performance was superior in eight. Of the two with superior Coalition performance, the net differences in performance were the smallest.

The Coalition’s claim to have introduced more police than Labor was calculated on a selective and misleading basis. Rather, comparing like with like, Labor introduced more police (1,935) than the Coalition (1,895), and more than the Coalition pledged at the 2014 election (1,100 equivalent).

The Coalition’s claim to have introduced more PSOs on the train network than Labor was technically true but indefensible given its own 2014 election pledge. The Coalition promised 50 new PSOs, while Labor delivered 271.

Despite the Coalition’s election postcard mailed to voters depicting a residential burglary, residential burglaries decreased more under Labor (down 14.1%) than under the Coalition (down 2.2%).

The Coalition claim that breaches of bail create a “revolving door” for offenders under Labor overlooked the fact that breaches of bail increased substantially under the Coalition (up 175.6%) and dropped under Labor (down 13.6%).

Variation in use and possession of hard drugs offences explained 95% of the variation in all offences over time, and 99% of all offences under the Coalition.[1] Hard drug use and possession offences increased significantly under the Coalition (up 131.2%) and dropped under Labor (down 8.5%).

The Coalition is better at driving public satisfaction about policing services in concept, while Labor is better at driving public satisfaction about their personal interactions with police.

Law and order is a complex subject, with many visible and invisible factors affecting reported crime rates. Therefore, care must be taken when interpreting statistics. Prevention, detection, response, diversion and punitive initiatives all affect community order and safety. Community perceptions are also strongly influenced by the media.

This analysis was confined to assessing policing and crime rates — the subject of many of the major parties’ claims and counterclaims leading up to the election.

While both sides had good stories to tell and poor performances to explain, broad analysis of authoritative data showed that overall, performance on law and order was better under the current Labor government than under the previous Coalition government.

Specific findings are summarised in the Conclusions section.

 

Keywords: 

Analysis

|

Social research

|

Australia

|

Victoria

• Log in or register to post comments