For the 16th straight year, crime in NSW has fallen, the state's crime statisticians announced this week. Rates of car theft, murder and robbery are lower even than they were 25 years ago.

But who gets the credit? Police, sure. But perhaps we should also be thanking workers in Chinese electronic factories.

When asked to explain the fall, Don Weatherburn, the state's intensely logical crime statistician, cited a mix of factors. These included the improving economy, a drop in the purity of heroin at the turn of the century, and the declining price (and therefore desirability for the criminal classes) of consumer goods.

"Who would steal a colour TV?" Weatherburn asked.

Of course, he also noted the fact that we have many fewer crooks but more police.

Many kinds of violent and property crime are much lower than they were in 1990; murder is down by half and break-and-enter three-quarters. Police, and policing, could surely take some credit.

In the mid-1990s the NSW police had fewer than 12,000 operational staff, according to federal government estimates. Today that figure is 17,500.

This dynamic has implications for where police direct their attention.

Former NSW Detective Michael Kennedy, for instance, told me police are considering disbanding their armed robbery squad. The squad was a legendary league of hardmen who stopped (and, in a previous incarnation, occasionally partook in) stick-ups on banks and clubs.

Perhaps they policed themselves out of a job. But Dr Kennedy, who runs the University of Western Sydney's policing program highlighted another factor: eftpos. Clubs simply don't have as much cash on hand as they once did. Security systems have no doubt played a role too.

One corollary of the increase in police numbers, combined with the fall in traditional duties, is that new parts of life are being policed.

Until recently, a bureaucrat in a grey pullover would write you up for riding the train without a ticket. Now, it's a police officer carrying a Glock and seven kilograms of materiel.

Police sniffer dogs have recently been sent onto the mass transit system in addition to the nightclub circuit.

Its revenue from providing compulsory user-pays security at concerts and events has also shot up.

Fairfax Media revealed police recently charged $30,000 to secure an acoustic, 11,000-person Mumford and Sons concert in Dungog. Anyone familiar with the band's fans and oeuvre knows that task could be completed by two fine arts students and a jack-in-the-box.

It seems that all this means a drop in serious crime has led to a spike in detection of non-violent offences.

Transport regulatory offences, a category that includes fare evasion, was one of the few types of crime to rise last year; they were up 41 per cent.

Cocaine, cannabis and amphetamine possession were all up, while drug dealing remained stable.

It's a law of NSW politics that police numbers go up at elections.

Police have also been armed with new powers as crime plummets. In recent years they have gained the power to ban people associating with others, break-up disruptive anti-mining protests, to arrest people on the spot without a warrant and hold suspects for longer without arrest.

These changes all driven by politicians who like to take credit for crime stats, the police union and their symbiotic relationship with talkback autocrats.

But the crime rate and its causes is a more complicated picture than any of those like to present.

This is not to deny that areas outside of Sydney have seen significant increases in crime and some crimes, such as sexual assault, are much higher than 25 years ago.

But it's worth asking whether resources are being deployed where they are most needed.

Privately the state's most senior officers are conceding that even though the force is growing they are unable to compete with federal agencies for skilled recruits to work on emerging threats such as cyber crime.

In recent months there's been an acknowledgment from senior members of the force that crime is not something entirely within their control.

Police credit new government lockout regulations, not police work, with finally making a serious dent in the assault rate.

State and federal police figures have variously acknowledged that ice use, road deaths and religious extremism are problems that society cannot "police its way out of".

But attempting to police our way of of problems is an approach, by and large, that still prevails. But perhaps we are moving past the point at which it's making us safer.