Family Violence in Victoria (2019–2024)

Mallika Kaur (S4128662)

Are rising family-violence rates driven by risk… or population?

Scope: Victoria, 2019–2024.
Sources: CSA Table 01 (LGA incidents & rates); ABS ERP (Dec-qtr) for cross-check.

Method (rates):
• Weighted = Σ(LGA incidents) / Σ(implied LGA pop) × 100k
• ABS check = CSA incidents / ABS Dec ERP × 100k

Incidents & state rate (2019–2024)

Recorded incidents

State rate per 100,000

Year-to-year change in rate

ABS vs weighted comparison (Dec-quarter ERP)

ABS (Dec-qtr) vs population-weighted rate per 100,000 residents
Year	Weighted rate	ABS rate	ABS − Weighted	% diff
2019	1280.2	1281.1	0.9	0.1%
2020	1376.5	1405.4	28.9	2.1%
2021	1362.3	1387.8	25.5	1.9%
2022	1397.7	1375.0	-22.6	-1.6%
2023	1381.9	1365.5	-16.3	-1.2%
2024	1500.2	1491.5	-8.7	-0.6%

Differences are within ±2% for most years → the story is not sensitive to denominator choice.

Where did the jump happen? (Police regions, 2023 → 2024)

Police-region patterns (2019–2024)

LGAs: 2024 incident counts and changes from 2023

Indexed state rate

Limits & References

Key limitations
• Recorded incidents reflect policing/reporting, not true prevalence
• Denominator choice matters: weighted vs ABS
• ABS Dec ERP aligns to CSA “year ending December”

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025). National, state and territory population, March 2025 [Data set].
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/mar-2025

Crime Statistics Agency. (2025). Family incidents data tables, year ending December 2019–2024 [Data set].
https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/download-crime-data

Wickham, H., et al. (2019). dplyr: A grammar of data manipulation [R package].
https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr

Wickham, H. (2016). ggplot2: Elegant graphics for data analysis [R package].
https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggplot2

Xie, Y., Allaire, J. J., & Grolemund, G. (2020). R Markdown: The definitive guide.
https://bookdown.org/yihui/rmarkdown/