The number of violent crimes has decreased, new figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology show.
The institute report Australian Crime: Facts and Figures 2011 shows incidents of murder, assault, sexual assault, and robbery all fell in 2010 from the previous calendar year.
The number of homicides has been in decline since 354 people were killed in 1996. Some 260 murders were recorded in 2010.
The decrease in sexual assault continues a downward trend which started in 2008.
The only category of violent crime which increased in 2010 was kidnapping and abduction which went up from 564 to 603.
Crimes against property decreased again as it as done so over the previous decade.
It has decreased by 43 per cent from 1,275,785 in 2001 to 732,791 in 2010.
The most common victims of crime were men. However, men were also the most common perpetrators of crime.
Women were most likely to be threatened with assault in their own home.
Men were just as likely to be threatened at work or in their place of study as at home.
The report showed that recidivism was largely unchanged.
The rate of offenders going to prison after a previous period in confinement has been steady over the past five years.
Of the prisoners who were released in 2007-08, some 38 per cent were returned to prison after being sentenced by June 30 2010 and 44 per cent were returned to corrective services (either prison or non-custodial sentence orders).
The institute said that the greatest number of offenders for most crimes were people aged 18 and 19 years old.
The rate of fraud victimisation was down by 11 per cent in 2009-10 from the previous 12 months.
And since a peak in 1998-99 of 593 fraud offences per 100,000 people the rate in 2009-10 fell to 383.
