Victim advocates and a former police officer have questioned the relevance of data showing cops are solving a higher proportion of crimes than ever before.
Legal actions for reported car thefts, burglaries and robberies have doubled in NSW since 2009, a Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research report found.
Improvements were also seen for assaults, including those related to domestic violence, though closure rates for sexual assault cases have declined.
But victim advocates do not think it is anything to celebrate and said improvements could be attributed to more access to technology such as CCTV.
Police officer turned criminologist Michael Kennedy said reducing policing to the bare numbers missed the complexities of the job.
“It’s the equivalent of saying, ‘the more tickets that highway patrol gives out, the safer the roads will be’ and we know that’s not the case,” he told AAP.
“It’s an opinion being presented as a rational truth.
“But it’s not rational and it’s not true … you can’t apply that model of policing in every suburb, in every district, in every state.”
The constant chase of improved efficiency treated policing as a “business rather than a social contract” and was driving young cops out of the force, the University of New England associate professor said.
“They’re exhausted from this expectation their competency is measured by continuous improved productivity,” Dr Kennedy said.
The report, released on Wednesday, follows concerns about crime rates in several states including anti-Semitic attacks, gangland wars and violent youth offending.
Families grieving unsolved homicides and missing persons would not be comforted by the data, victims advocate Howard Brown said.
“A report comes and says we’re doing a much better job … tell that to the people who are still waiting and who have been waiting 20 years for results in the death of their loved one,” he told AAP.
“This type of thing is insulting.”
Fellow homicide victims advocate Peter Rolfe congratulated the police on the historic high rates, but questioned why murder cases didn’t follow the trend.
The report found the rate of solving murder cases was stable at about 65 per cent.
The crime statistics bureau’s executive director said the reason for the stable rate was likely not in police control.
“I suspect the characteristics of individual cases are most influential in whether a murder is solved, rather than factors that are at the discretion of police,” Jackie Fitzgerald told AAP.
She said it should be of comfort to victims and the community that the risk of arrest for criminals was “undoubtedly higher than ever before”.
Of the 11 offences examined, nine showed a significantly higher legal action rate in 2023 compared with 2009, the report found.
About one in eight motor vehicle thefts are solved, up from one in 20.
Rates for solving domestic violence-related assault have risen from 60 per cent to 67 per cent.
Sexual assault was the only offence with a significant decline in the legal action rate, dropping from 10 per cent in 2009 to seven per cent in 2023.
The data showed hard work was making a difference, Police Minister Yasmin Catley said.
“Police don’t just catch offenders – they put in the tough, behind-the-scenes work to make sure those people are held accountable, a process that is often complex (and) relentless,” she said.
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