Crime statistics in Victoria reveal contrasting trends across different offence categories. Between 2025 and 2026, the rate of property and deception offences decreased by approximately 8.6%, while justice procedures offences increased by 12.3%. A closer examination shows declining theft and burglary rates alongside a sharp increase in breaches of bail conditions. Using data from the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, this report examines how these offence patterns have changed over time.
Graph 1 shows how property and deception offences and justice procedures offences changed in Victoria between 2017 and 2026. Property offence rates generally declined until 2022, then increased sharply, reaching their highest point in 2025 before falling in 2026. In contrast, justice procedures offences showed an overall upward trend and reached their highest rate in 2026. These contrasting patterns highlight how different offence categories can change in different directions.
Graph 2 compares different types of property and deception offences in 2025 and 2026. Theft remained the most common category, although its rate decreased in 2026. Burglary and property damage also declined, while deception offences increased slightly. This shows that not all property offence categories followed the same trend.
Graph 3 compares different types of breaches of orders in 2025 and 2026. Breaches of family violence orders remained the largest category but decreased slightly. In contrast, breaches of bail conditions increased sharply, from approximately 153 to 281 incidents per 100,000 people. This increase was the main contributor to the rise in justice procedures offences.
Crime Statistics Agency. (2026). Criminal incidents – Year ending June 2026 [Data set]. DataVic. https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/criminal-incident/resource/cb7e4889-0fca-4db4-b1c2-b34579c5b4db
The data used in this report was provided by the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria. Visualisations were developed using R, ggplot2 and plotly. ChatGPT was used to assist with RStudio troubleshooting, plotting code and wording drafts.