Street mugging most common armed robbery

Forget the popular view of armed robbers as balaclava-clad professionals who hold up banks with automatic weapons and escape with tens of thousands in loot.

The typical Australian armed robbery is actually a street mugging conducted by a single knife-wielding male targeting a single male victim for cash and occasionally mobile phones.

In a study from the Australian Institute of Criminology, analyst Georgina Fuller surveyed 627 police robbery reports for the period 2004-10 to determine characteristics.

Most common were robberies conducted in public places such as streets (41 per cent), with offenders armed with knives but also branches, rocks and broken glass.

That's followed by robberies of what's termed insecure businesses such as service stations, chemists and bottle shops (37 per cent).

They involved high levels of aggression, but rarely violence because most shop staff speedily complied with threatening demands.

Such robberies often occurred late at night and appeared unplanned, with the crooks exerting little effort at disguise.

Home invasions (12 per cent) in search of cash or drugs often involved robbers and victims who knew each other.

Most worrying, such robberies more often involved violence than other types, with 14 per cent of victims sustaining serious or life-threatening injury.

Least common were robberies of secure business such as banks, post office and pubs (eight per cent), premises which carry plenty of cash but also feature significant security measures.

Offenders, more often gangs rather than individuals, exclusively targeted cash but hauls weren't in the Lotto win league.

The top sum reported stolen was $50,000, with the median haul between $1000 to $6000.

Guns were commonly used in such robberies, which often appeared to involve a high level of planning.