Lord Mayor Nick Reece, announcing a new team of 11 Council safety officers last week, said the city was safe but there was an ‘epidemic’ of petty crime, including illegal drug use, aggressive behaviour, tagging, and shoplifting. This followed the release of the latest official crime statistics, which found Statewide crime was up 15% in the last 12 months.
Releasing the latest data, CSA Chief Statistician Fiona Dowsley said, “Theft offenses have continued to rise sharply, with nearly a quarter of a million offenses recorded in the last year. Increases were largest for thefts from motor vehicles and retail stores, with many of these offenses linked to repeat offending.”
And the local news is not pretty
The latest data for Port Phillip is likely to inflame community discussion about safety in Port Phillip and beyond.
For the year ending March 2025, reported criminal incidents in Port Phillip are up 23% on the previous year. Most of the crime is street-level, with thefts from cars topping the list. St Kilda is a hot spot, followed by South Melbourne.
In neighbouring municipalities, the increases were: Stonnington 22%, Glen Eira 10.9%, Bayside 7%, and Melbourne 24%. North of the river, Yarra experienced a 24% increase, while Darebin rocketed up by a staggering 38%.
This chart presents the criminal offenses for the Port Phillip municipal area. The headline summary is more street-level crime, mostly in St Kilda and South Melbourne, mostly theft from cars. The Crime Statistics Agency website has a range of different ways of presenting the data that data enthusiasts will appreciate: .
A useful tool to compare crime across municipalities is the crime rate per 100,000 population:
| Local Government Area | Crimes per 100,000 people |
| Melbourne | 17792 |
| Yarra | 12767 |
| Port Phillip | 10759 |
| Maribyrnong | 10299 |
| Stonnington | 9424 |
| Darebin | 9271 |
| Hobsons Bay | 6491 |
| Bayside | 4332 |
| Glen Eira | 4166 |
Behind the stats
The Crime Statistics Agency collates the data from reports to Vic Pol and reports it publicly. The CSA receives the raw data, checks for data quality issues and applies counting rules to produce the final CSA population datasets. The datasets released each quarter, beginning March 2015.
www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au
