A data story from ten years of Victorian alleged offender statistics (2016–17 to 2025–26)
Over the past two years, Victoria's crime debate has been dominated by one group: young people. The state government introduced tougher bail laws and announced "adult time for violent crime" sentencing for children as young as 14, and youth offending has been the lead story on nightly news bulletins.
The detailed alleged offender statistics published by the Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) tell a different story. In the year ending June 2026, people aged 10–17 accounted for just 11% of alleged offender incidents, and youth incidents fell 9% on the previous year. Meanwhile adult incidents climbed 22% in two years to 172,668, the highest number in a decade.
An alleged offender incident is a criminal incident in which Victoria Police has identified a person as the alleged offender. It is the best available measure of who is offending.
Reading the charts: every chart is interactive. Hover for exact values, click legend items to hide or show a series, and drag to zoom (double-click to reset).
Adults make up almost nine in every ten alleged offender incidents, and their numbers have grown every year since 2022. Youth numbers did rise between 2022 and 2025, and that rise was real, but it has started to reverse. Switch to the growth index view to compare the two groups on the same footing: by 2025–26, adult incidents are 22% above their 2016–17 level and still climbing steeply, while youth incidents are 15% above and heading down.
Each square compares an age group's offending rate (incidents per 100,000 people of that age) with its 2016–17 level. Because rates allow for population growth, this view shows a real change in behaviour, not just more people.
A clear split emerges. The upper rows, people under 30, have turned blue: young adults are offending far less than they used to. For men aged 18–19, the rate is down 30% on 2016–17. The rows for people aged 45 and over have turned red, and the colour deepens almost every year. Among men, the offending rate has risen 45% for 45–49-year-olds and 73% for 50–54-year-olds. Use the dropdown (top right) to compare men and women: the pattern holds for both.
The classic "age–crime curve", where offending peaks in the late teens and falls away, is flattening. Victoria's offenders are getting older.
Comparing the last two years shows how broad the adult increase is. Adults recorded around 14,776 more property and deception incidents and 6,965 more justice procedures incidents (mainly breaches of court orders and bail). Across all six categories, youth incidents changed by -141 in total. Click "Adults (18+)" in the legend to see the youth changes on their own scale.
Two offences stand out. Shoplifting (steal from a retail store) rose by 6,903 incidents in two years, from 14,403 to 21,306, a rise consistent with cost-of-living pressure. Breaching a family violence order rose by 4,146. It belongs to the justice procedures category, where adults account for 98% of incidents, and it signals ongoing danger to victims, yet it rarely makes headlines.
The way police deal with alleged offenders has diverged by age. In 2016–17, a young person was about as likely to be arrested as an adult. By 2025–26, 42% of youth incidents ended in a caution, warning or other non-court outcome, up from 23%, and only 29% ended in arrest, compared with 41% for adults aged 25 and over.
Tougher responses are being proposed for the age group that police increasingly deal with outside the courts, and whose offending has started to fall. The fastest-growing group, middle-aged adults, are already mostly arrested or summonsed, yet their offending keeps rising. This data cannot show what causes either trend, but it suggests a tougher approach alone is not what separates rising and falling offending.
The data does not say youth crime is unimportant. Youth incidents did rise between 2022 and 2025, and serious youth offending causes real harm. But a debate focused almost entirely on children misses where most of the growth is happening:
Ahead of the November 2026 state election, the question is not only "how tough should we be on kids?" but also "why are more middle-aged Victorians coming into contact with police, and what would prevent it?"
Australian Associated Press. (2025). 'Adult time for violent crime' laws coming for kids. AAP News. https://aapnews.aap.com.au/news/adult-time-for-violent-crime-laws-coming-for-kids
Crime Statistics Agency. (2026). Data tables: Alleged offender incidents visualisation, year ending June 2026 [Data set]. Victorian Government. https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/
Monash Lens. (2025). Victoria's 'adult time for violent crime' reforms will not solve the youth crime problem. Monash University. https://lens.monash.edu/victorias-adult-time-for-violent-crime-reforms-will-not-solve-the-youth-crime-problem/
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Data is provided by the Crime Statistics Agency, Victoria, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. The CSA is the source of all crime statistics in this report.
Generative AI (Claude) was used to help identify a suitable dataset and story angle, explore the Crime Statistics Agency data, I selected the topic, checked the figures against the source data, ran and tested all code in RStudio, edited the text, and published the report.