About Us

The initial impetus for the Comprehensive Auto-theft Research System (CARS) arose in 1993 within the South Australian Vehicle Theft Reduction Committee. This Committee is a joint private and public sector committee established to advise the South Australian Attorney General on vehicle theft reduction strategies. The committee members recognised that in order to successfully tackle vehicle theft, they needed access to timely, comprehensive and accurate information from a wide range of sources. Furthermore, they noted that decisions about strategies could not be formulated on the basis of a single annual theft and recovery statistic and that reliance solely on police or insurance data provides only one perspective of the situation. Reducing vehicle theft is a complex issue and requires a number of different coordinated strategies each targeting different aspects of the problem and continual monitoring of the trends. Access to an integrated database of vehicle theft and recovery data provides researchers and policy makers with the tools to analyse the complete picture and help develop and effective strategies.

After a successful feasibility study was conducted in 1994 the South Australian CARS database become operational as from January 1st 1995, collecting vehicle theft related data from SA Police, Transport SA's Registration and Licensing division, and all motor vehicle insurers operating in South Australia. Reflecting the recognition that the project needed to be a joint project involving both inputs and rewards for all major stakeholders, CARS was jointly funded by government agencies and the insurance industry.

CARS has been established and maintained by the Office of Crime Statistics and Research (OCSAR), within the South Australian Attorney General's Department. The Office of Crime Statistics and Research was the logical choice for the establishment of the project as in addition to having extensive experience in processing criminal justice datasets, OCSAR also possessed staff with the range of computing, statistical and research skills needed.

Since establishment, CARS has attracted extensive national and international interest and acclaim. In particular, specific interest in the project has been received from organisations in North America, Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Belgium. In 2004, CARS won the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators (Australasian Branch) award for "Outstanding Contribution to the Reduction/Prevention of Motor Vehicle Theft in Australasia".

National Expansion

During 1996, under the auspices of the National Anti-Crime Strategy Lead Minister's Group and in partnership with the Insurance Council of Australia, a National Task Force was established to recommend a range of strategies to reduce vehicle theft in Australia.

As part of its deliberations the National Motor Vehicle Theft Task Force acknowledged that the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of theft reduction strategies, and monitor changes in theft trends, is critical to the implementation of a national strategy for reducing motor vehicle theft. In 1997 in its final report the Task Force observed that the absence of nationally integrated registration, police and insurance data is a major barrier to effective evaluation and recommended that the South Australian Attorney-General's Department be contracted to expand its Comprehensive Auto-theft Research System (CARS) to become the national statistical and research database for motor vehicle theft.

Following consideration of Task Force Report during 1998 the State and Territory Governments together with the insurance industry agreed to establish the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council (NMVTRC) to coordinate the implementation of a number of the strategies proposed by the Task Force and to further develop additional strategies.

The NMVTRC, like the National Task Force, recognised the importance of an effective statistical, research and monitoring system and as of June 1999 funded the South Australian Office of Crime Statistics and Research to enhance the existing CARS database to develop and maintain a fully national statistical and research database.

Our Pupose

To facilitate the development and evaluation of MVT policy:

The main stimulus for developing a national CARS database is its ability to contribute to the development and evaluation of national motor vehicle theft policy. Vehicle thieves are not restricted by state and territory borders. Professional thieves frequently steal vehicles from one state and dispose of them in another to reduce the risk of detection and apprehension. Furthermore, trends that develop in one geographic region generally spread around the country. Therefore, detailed information across the whole nation is important in the development of effective policy at both the national and local levels.

The integration of insurance, police, registration and other data into a single comprehensive database provides a much wider and more detailed picture than is possible by considering each data source in isolation. This clearer picture is now available at the national, state and local levels. As such, it provides the much-needed statistical infrastructure for policy makers at all levels and should lead to improvements in the ability of government and non-government stakeholders to develop effective and efficient strategies to respond to vehicle theft.

Improved accuracy and reliability:

The increased database size that results from the pooling of data from all jurisdictions facilitates the use of more meaningful and more powerful statistical analyses. It also allows emerging trends to be detected more readily. For example, the identification of a weakness in the security of a particular model can be detected much sooner with the larger national sample. Likewise, analysis of specific topics such as arson-related thefts or insurance fraud can be undertaken using a single year of data. Without a national database researchers would need to wait a number of years for the database size to build up, during which time maturation factors may confound the analysis and make interpretation of the findings more difficult.

Facilitate research and raise awareness of the issues and potential solutions:

The availability of national vehicle theft data facilitates more research and generates a renewed interest in the area by academics, policymakers, criminologists and crime prevention practitioners.

Despite having one of the highest levels of vehicle theft in the world, only limited research into this issue has been undertaken in Australia. In the last 25 years only a handful of small studies have been conducted, notably by the Australian Institute of Criminology and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. The availability of a comprehensive set of integrated data greatly facilitates the work of criminologists, researchers and policy analysts by:

• enabling the analyses of issues that previously could not be undertaken;
• eliminating one of the major costs of any research project - namely, the collection and purification of the data.

This second factor alone attracts researchers, many of whom may never have previously focused on vehicle theft. With these researchers will also come the introduction of fresh ideas and new ways of addressing the issues.

CARS has now been collecting and analysing vehicle theft data for over a decade and together with the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council is one of only a limited number of organisations around the world to have staff devoted solely to the issue of vehicle theft. During the development of both the initial South Australian and National CARS databases the staff have developed a depth of knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the issues relating to motor vehicle theft. This together with the unique database makes CARS one of the leading centres for motor vehicle theft research.