For ACT businesses
Understanding business crime
Crimes against businesses include:
- fraud
- burglary
- shopstealing and theft
- robbery
- arson, and
- malicious damage (such as graffiti, smashed windows etc).
In one survey conducted by the Australian Institute of Criminology, 49 per cent of businesses reported they had experienced crime in the previous year. The average financial cost of crime against a business was nearly $5,000 (from Financial and Psychological Costs of Crime for Small Retail Businesses, Australian Institute of Criminology, 2002).
What causes business crime
The cycle of crime (right) shows the four elements needed for a crime to occur:
- Offender
- Victim
- Opportunity
- Location.
How to reduce crime
Crime can be reduced through the following:
- Reducing the number of motivated offenders
- Making crime more difficult to commit, and
- Anticipating new types of crime and find ways to stop them occurring.
You can help to make crime more difficult to commit by:
- finding out what the real problems are in your area
- identifying and assessing risks to your business, and
- identifying the actions you can take to reduce these risks.
What the AFP is doing
The AFP is working together with the business community to help reduce crime and the fear of crime. Together we can attack one or more of the conditions in the cycle of crime.