Common Crimes: Victoria Edition
What is the most common crime in each Victorian suburb?
The crime rate in Victoria is rising. With this in mind, our criminal law specialists wanted to analyse the crime data from the last five years to discover the most common crimes across Victoria, as well as in each suburb, and to understand how crime rates are changing.
Discover how your suburb ranks with the interactive tables below.
The most common criminal offences in Victoria
The most common criminal offence occurring in Victoria is ‘theft’. Over a third (38%) of crimes in the state were categorised as theft, with ‘stealing from a motor vehicle’ being the most prevalent. In fact, there were over 55,000 cases of theft from a motor vehicle in the year analysed.
Following ‘theft’, ‘breaches of orders’ is the second most reported crime in Victoria. This category includes breaching family violence orders, bail conditions and intervention orders. ‘Assault and related offences’ closely followed as the third highest reported crime in Victoria.
The LGAs with the highest crime rates in Victoria
Melbourne has the highest crime rate of all LGAs in Victoria. This is no surprise, as city areas have a high population density and a large number of transient visitors, which increase opportunities for crime. In addition, cities—particularly Melbourne—have vibrant nightlife that leads to increased alcohol-related crime.
On the other end of the scale, the seaside village of Queenscliff has the lowest crime rate in Victoria. This may be because of the small town nature of the LGA, as well as the aging population of the area and low socioeconomic disparities.
The most common crimes in each LGA in Victoria
So how does your suburb compare to the rest of Victoria? Use our interactive map to find out.
The LGAs with highest and lowest rate of each crime in Victoria
There are certain LGAs where you are most likely to see each incident type reported. ‘Stealing from a motor vehicle’ is the most common crime in Victoria, but Casey experiences the highest number of incidents, while Yarra experiences the highest rate of incidents.
Out of the 107 crimes analysed, Melbourne has the highest number of incidents for 48 of those crimes, including ‘criminal damage to property’, ‘stealing from a retail store’ and ‘residential non-aggravated burglary’. Melbourne also has the highest rate of 20 crimes, including ‘motor vehicle theft’, ‘aggravated robbery’ and ‘disorderly conduct’.
Changes in the number of criminal offences in Victoria
Overall, the crime rate in Victoria is rising by 6.4%. ‘Cultivate or manufacture drugs’ has seen the largest percentage increase in crimes over the last five years, rising by 75%. This is a significant increase compared to other crimes, with ‘sexual offences’ having the second-highest increase at 26%. Interestingly, despite the rate of ‘cultivate or manufacture drugs’ rising ‘drug deal and trafficking’ and ‘drug use and possession’ have both decreased in incidents. ‘Disorderly and offensive conduct’ is the crime with the largest percentage decrease, with incidents declining by 68.5%.
About the data
The data used for this study was obtained from the Crimes Statistics Agency, who present statistics recorded by Victoria Police in the Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP). This study analyses recorded criminal incidents in the year ending June 2024. The incidents are recorded by the Local Government Area (LGA) of occurrence. This excludes criminal incidents at Justice institutions and immigration facilities, Unincorporated Victoria and where the geographic location is unknown.
The rate per 100,000 population illustrates the relative crime per head of residential population for each LGA over the course of a year. This is computed by dividing the number of recorded incidents by the residential population for each area. Rates per 100,000 population are derived using the incident count for the reference period and population estimates from the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) Victoria in Future data. For more information on the data source, see explanatory notes from the CSA. Rates should be treated cautiously for regions with high visitor numbers relative to the residential population.
State rankings are based on 79 LGAs available for comparison for incidents and rates per 100,000 population.
In order to maintain confidentiality, sensitive offence counts for subdivisions ‘Homicide and related offences’ and ‘Sexual offences’ with a value of 3 or less are given a value of 2 to calculate totals.
^ DTP is the agency responsible for the development of the official state government population projections, which incorporate the latest population estimates, evidence from the latest Census plus assumptions regarding future births, deaths, migration and local development trends.