Crime rates map

View relative crime levels in different suburbs through an interactive map.

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This page outlines the methodology used to calculate crime statistics for different geographies.

Methodology

Geographical areas are ranked based on their adjusted crime rates, using a combination of state-level survey data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and suburb-level crime data from state and territory police forces. Together, these sources allow for the calculation of nationally consistent crime rates for small areas.

Compilation of crime data

The ABS Crime Victimisation Survey estimates the number of victims of each crime type by state and territory. While not available for small areas, the victims data is nationally consistent and allows for comparisons between jurisdictions.

All states and territories except Tasmania and the Northern Territory provide raw counts for the number of offences recorded by suburb, classified by type of offence. These data are not consistent nationally, however are assumed to be consistent between suburbs within the same jurisdiction.

The ABS crime victim data are used to scale the state and territory offence data to provide adjusted offence counts by suburb. The adjusted offence counts are used to calculate a population-weighted percentile rank for each suburb by crime type.

Coverage

Crime statistics cover all Australian states and territories except Tasmania and the Northern Territory due to the lack of publicly available suburb-level crime data. Statistics are available for suburbs and localities (suburb) and 2024 local government areas (LGA) defined under the Australian Statistical Geography Standard Edition 3. Only suburbs and LGAs with significant populations are included due to interpretability issues for suburbs with small populations.

Reference period

The data are with reference to the average of the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years. Pooling the data across two years improves the reliability of the estimates for small areas.

Sources