How often are people my age recorded as victims of crime in Victoria, and for which offences? I expected 18–24-year-olds to have the highest victimisation rates of any age group. The data shows something different: young adults are not the most victimised group overall, but the offences recorded against them differ in important ways from those affecting other ages. Using ten years of Victoria Police data from the Crime Statistics Agency, this report follows 18–24-year-olds through the data: how victimisation changes with age, which offences stand out for young adults, how young women’s and young men’s experiences differ, and what has changed since 2017.
Let’s start with the big picture: how the risk of being a victim changes with age. Press Play or drag the slider to see whether the pattern holds across the decade.
Source: Crime Statistics Agency (2026), Victim Reports data tables, Table 02.
Chart summary: Victimisation climbs steeply in the late teens, from around 2,650 per 100,000 at 15–17 to about 5,000 at 20–24, and peaks between 25 and 34 in every year since 2017. In 2026, men were recorded as victims more often than women at every adult age, but that hasn’t always been the case: between 2018 and 2022, women aged 18–19 had higher rates than men, and in 2021 and 2022 so did women aged 20–24.
So young adults aren’t the most victimised group overall. But what happens to them looks different. Each cell compares an age group’s rate with the Victorian average for that offence. Red means higher than average, blue means lower. Hover for the exact numbers.
Source: Crime Statistics Agency (2026), Victim Reports data tables, Tables 02 and 04. Rates derived by the author.
Chart summary: In 2026, 18–24-year-olds were victims of sexual offences at 2.2 times the Victorian average, the highest ratio of any age group for any offence. They also stood out for deception (1.4 times) and other crimes against the person (1.6 times). Burglary was the opposite: at 0.7 times the average, it was the lowest burglary rate of any adult age group.
Splitting 18–24-year-olds by sex shows two quite different experiences. Each grey line joins the female and male rate for one offence, and the longer the line, the wider the gap.
Source: Crime Statistics Agency (2026), Victim Reports data tables, Tables 02 and 04. Rates derived by the author. A log scale is used so that both common and less common offences are readable.
Chart summary: The biggest gap is in sexual offences. Women aged 18–24 were recorded as victims at 612 per 100,000 in 2026, compared with 133 for men, a rate 4.6 times higher. Young women also had higher rates of stalking and harassment (2.4 times) and of assault. Young men were more often victims of theft and other crimes against the person.
Pick an offence from the menu to see how things have moved for 18–24-year-olds since 2017, compared with Victorians of all ages. Each option in the menu shows the overall change for both groups.
Source: Crime Statistics Agency (2026), Victim Reports data tables, Tables 02 and 04. Rates derived by the author.
Chart summary: Sexual offences recorded against 18–24-year-olds rose from 208 per 100,000 in 2017 to 366 in 2026, with the sharpest jump in the latest year. Deception also rose, but for every age group, not just young adults. Burglary went the other way, almost halving from 409 to 222 per 100,000.
This last chart puts the decade side by side. Each row compares the change for 18–24-year-olds with the change for all ages. Use the buttons to switch between everyone, young women and young men.
Source: Crime Statistics Agency (2026), Victim Reports data tables, Tables 02 and 04. Rates derived by the author.
Chart summary: Since 2017, sexual offence victimisation among 18–24-year-olds has risen 76%, more than double the 30% rise across all ages. Burglary against young adults fell 46% and property damage 31%, both faster than the overall decline. Deception more than doubled for young adults (+124%), but it rose just as much for everyone else (+137%), so it isn’t a young-person problem.
So, how often are people my age recorded as victims of crime, and for which offences?
Overall, 18–24-year-olds are recorded as victims less often than people in their late twenties and early thirties. The mix of offences, however, is distinct, and it has changed over the decade. Recorded burglary and property damage against young adults fell faster than for Victorians overall, while recorded sexual offences rose by 76%, compared with 30% across all ages. In 2026, young women were recorded as victims of sexual offences at more than four times the rate of young men.
These are recorded figures, so changes may reflect reporting and policing as well as actual offending. Even so, the data shows a clear shift in the types of crime recorded against young adults in Victoria over the past ten years.
All figures come from the Crime Statistics Agency’s victim reports, which count each time Victoria Police records someone as a victim, so one person can appear more than once. Years run from 1 July to 30 June, meaning “2017” covers July 2016 to June 2017. For Charts 2–5, I calculated rates using the population figures behind the CSA’s own published rates (Table 02), and organisations are excluded. Recorded crime reflects reporting and policing as well as actual offending, and COVID-19 lockdowns between March 2020 and October 2021 affected the numbers in the years ending June 2020 to 2022.
I have used Grammarly for grammar corrections. And i have also used Claude for guidance on installing R packages and publishing my report to RPubs, for suggesting sources by pointing me to the Crime Statistics Agency’s victim reports data tables, which I downloaded and checked myself and lastly technical explanations explaining how specific R/plotly functions work.
Crime Statistics Agency. (2026). Victim reports data tables: Year ending June 2026 [Data set]. State Government of Victoria. https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/latest-victorian-crime-data/download-data
Anthropic. (2026). Claude [Large language model]. https://claude.ai