Hard data reveals who's better at law and order in Victoria

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What does the hard evidence say about the Coalition and Labor on law and order?

MEDIA RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — 21 Nov 2018

As Victorians head to the polls, an independent research report released today throws light on the question of whether the Coalition or Labor are better at managing law and order.

"We were intrigued by the calls for fact checks of claims made by politicians," said research agency ResearchSquirrel CEO, Mr Neil Francis.

"The fact checks tested specific claims but didn't answer the question of overall performance, so we resolved to check the hard evidence," he said.

Data was obtained from official sources including Victoria's Crime Statistics Agency, Victoria Police and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The analysis found Labor's claim that the Coalition government cut the Victoria Police budget and workforce to be false. It also found the Coalition's claim to have added more police than Labor to be false. Comparing like with like, Labor boosted police numbers (1,935) by both more than the Coalition in office (1,895) and more than the Coalition’s pledge at the 2014 election (1,100 equivalent).

“We noticed that the Coalition used comparative Labor data to stake its claim about police numbers, while reporting only Labor’s numbers but not their own, to claim a ‘crisis’ 10.5% increase in crime under Labor,” said Mr Francis. “We soon discovered why.”

Under the Coalition and using its own calculation method, the total criminal offences rate increased 21.6%. Adjusting for population growth, there was a 1.7% increase in the total offences rate under Labor and 12.1% under the Coalition.

Breach of family violence orders increased 143.0%, and breach of bail conditions 175.6%, under the Coalition. Family violence orders increased much less (54.4%), and breaches of bail conditions dropped by 13.5%, under Labor.

“We were surprised by these results given the Coalition’s claim of a bail ‘revolving door’ for reoffending under Labor,” Mr Francis said.

To provide a broad overview of performance, the agency compared Coalition and Labor performance across the top ten crime categories, covering 90.3% of all offences. These included theft, breaches of orders, burglary, assault, property damage, obtaining property by deception, drug use and possession, public disorder, sexual and weapons offences.

Labor’s performance was better on eight of the ten. For the two with superior Coalition performance, theft and property damage, differences in performance were the smallest.

But perhaps the most revealing finding was the correlation between hard drug use offences and the total offences rate. Hard drug use doesn’t encourage all other crimes, but is strongly associated with a number including burglary, assault, weapons, and dangerous or negligent acts against others.

The analysis found the variation in the hard drug use offences rate explained 95% of the variation in all offences over time, and 99% of the variation in all offences during the Coalition government. Hard drug use and possession offences increased dramatically under the Coalition (up 131.2%) and declined under Labor (down 8.5%).

“That indicates a major policy failure for the Coalition,” said Mr Francis.

Both parties were given an opportunity to respond to selected results at odds with their claims. “While both had been keen to send through further claims or cherry-picked data to support their claims, both offered a dead bat to the contrary evidence,” Mr Francis said.

The report concludes that while both parties had specific good and bad performance measures, the hard data showed overall performance was superior under Labor.

Voters go to the polls on Saturday.

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The full report of the analysis is available here.


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