Summary
Key findings
• Across the selected offences, three regional trends and one metropolitan trend would have been less favourable if rejected incidents had been included. [See Table 1]
• Total rejected incidents remained stable in the 24 months to September 2022, with 4.6 per cent of all incidents rejected in the 12 months to September 2022. [See Table 2]
• While below the 5 per cent considered acceptable for statistical collections, this is up on the previous report, where 2.5 per cent of incidents were rejected in the 12 months to March 2019.
• Blackmail and extortion had an upward trend in rejected incidents, although a decreasing rejection rate due to increasing total incident numbers. [See Table 2]
• Five offences had a downward trend in rejected incidents: Sexual assault (-17.8%), Robbery without a weapon (-23.1%), Break and enter dwelling (-10.2%), Steal from motor vehicle (-9.5%) and Malicious damage to property (-2.4%). [See Table 2]
• Seventeen offences had a rejection rate above five per cent and more than 20 incidents rejected in the 12 months to September 2022: Domestic violence related assault (13.4%), Non-domestic violence related assault (11.7%), Sexual assault (7.8%), Sexual touching, sexual act and other sexual offences (5.5%), Abduction and kidnapping (17.5%), Robbery without a weapon (16.9%), Robbery with a weapon not a firearm (10.2%), Blackmail and extortion (7.6%), Other offences against the person (6.0%), Break and enter dwelling (9.2%), Motor vehicle theftii (9.7%), Steal from dwelling (9.4%), Steal from person (20.5%), Stock theft (16.2%), Fraud (6.0%), Other theft (5.6%) and Breach Apprehended Violence Order (10.5%) [See Table 2].
• For the selected offences across NSW PACs/PDs, there were twenty-seven uptrends and twenty-seven downtrends in rejected incidents in the 24 months to September 2022, compared to eleven uptrends and four downtrends in the previous report for the 24 months to March 2019.
• The majority of uptrends were in Domestic violence related assault (uptrends in eight PACs/PDs, up from two in the March 2019 report), Intimidation, stalking and harassment (five PACs/PDs) and Breach Apprehended Violence Order (five PACs/PDs). [See Table 3]
• Three PACs/PDs showed uptrends in both rejected Domestic violence related assault incidents and rejected breach Apprehended Violence Order incidents: Lake Macquarie, Liverpool City and Newcastle City. [See Table 3]
• Riverina had high and upward trending rejection rates for three offences: Steal from dwelling, Non-domestic violence related assault & Breach Apprehended Violence Order [See Tables 3 & 4]
• The highest rejection rate across all PACs/PDs for selected offences was motor vehicle theftii in Kings Cross (46.9%). [See Table 4]
• Forty-two PACs/PDs had high rejection rates (above 9%) for Domestic violence related assault, with uptrends in eight PACs/PDs and downtrends in two. Thirty-six PACs/PDs had high rejection rates for Non-domestic violence related assault. Breach Apprehended Violence Order had high rejection rates in thirty-four PACs/PDs with an uptrend in Riverina (84.0%) and downtrend in The Hills (-56.9%). [See Table 4]