Forestdale Burglary compared with other Suburbs

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Because a question was asked in response to a Facebook post in relation to what the burglarly was like in Forestdale compared to other suburbs, taking into account demographic differences, I decided to do some research to find out.

Thanks to Ted Dale who gave me this link to the Queensland police services crime map page.

That gave me the crime figures and in particular unlawful entry numbers, by suburb.

I then used this Australian Bureau of Statistics page to find out the population in the appropriate suburbs

I am not a statistician, mathematician or researcher. I have next to no qualifications in anything. My background is in accounting and computing. I take no responsibility for the accuracy of any of this information. You can use it anyway you want.

Table and Graph Graph only

Compared to our closest suburb, Hillcrest, on number of people and number of premises, per 100,0000 basis, Forestdale has more unlawful entry crime.

But we have less than Browns plains.

But compared to the closest, but not as high, average weekly earnings suburbs of New Farn and St Lucia, we have higher unlawful entry crime.

Of the very few suburbs I chose for comparison Forestdale has the highest average weekly earnings.

See the tables and graphs above.

Nothing. Any reason for Forestdale having higher such crime than Hillcrest but lower than Browns plains would be purely speculation.

Note that the comparison is only for unlawful entry. Not burglary. Look at the definitions that the Queensland Police Service use for the difference between the to

I got the data from the previously mentioned websites. I copied the text from The Bureau of statistics site to a text file. I then went to the crime map site and got the figures for previous five years and last year for unlawful entry.

I put all of that data into a spreadsheet and produced a graph of it.

The Queensland Police services crime data maps are only one day old. When looking at any time period it is from the previous day backwards.

However the bureau statistic figures are for the 2021 census. So im not comparing the same time periods.

Because the last five years of crime figures are a simply accumulation they cannot be compared with the last year, for the reason above. Even dividing those figures by five would not give a comparison of the last year.

Because crime is relatively so small dividing the crime numbers by the population or household figures gives very small numbers, I chose to multiply these by 100,000 to make them in line with the figures that are published by Queensland Police Service. For this reason it makes no sense to compare the last year figures with the five year figuures

From the above table ther were 135 unlawful entries in Forestdale in the last five years. Being very conservative and allowing for one hour for the criminals to unlawfully enter, that means 135 hours within the five years.

Ther are 8,760 hours in a year 24 x 365. 43,800 hours in 5 years. Ther were 2,560 people in Forestdale according to the 2021 Australian census. So in the last 5 years those that live in Forestdale experienced 112,128,000 hours. So the average chance of a person experiencing a unlawful entry is once per 830,578 hours (112,128,000 divided by 135). Or once every 95 years.

Rather than using people, if the same calculations are done per private dwelling, it works out to once every 31 years.

However those statistics do not reflect the trauma that people may go through in having a once only robbery.

From Facebook:

“Lynn Whittingham

Geoff Greig you didn't take into consideration how many of them crimes where committed at the united petrol station, that makes a massive difference”

Lynn, when I first looked at your post I can see the point you are making.

I went back to the police crime map and had a look at the data I used.

I only used the unlawful entry classification. Not all crimes.

I have just checked the map data again and the figure for unlawful entry at the United petrol station for the last five years was only, one crime.

As that servo is open 24 hours a day it's unlikely that it's going to have unlawful entry crime classification. The vast majority of the crime committed at the servo is “theft other (excluding unlawful entry) of which as of today there were 247. The figures change every day. I would say that it is mainly people driving off without paying for the fuel.

I did NOT use theft other (excluding unlawful entry) in the comparisons I did with other suburbs.

My results therefore still stand.

You have to be very careful when you are using statistics.

The reason I did NOT use theft other (excluding unlawful entry) for my suburban comparison is because ther appears to be far more attempted theft than actually theft. But not so for the servo situation. It appears to me people are more concerned about having people unlawfully in their house, than they are of actually being robbed. For obvious psychological reasons.

Sentencing spotlight on burglary

Queensland crimes statistics

Queensland Government Statistician’s Office QUEENSLAND TREASURY Crime report, Queensland, 2021–22

Australian Standard Offence Classification