One evening near Sunshine, in Melbourne’s western suburbs, I witnessed an incident that made me think differently about safety in everyday public spaces. A person appeared to be attempting to steal a bicycle outside a restaurant. The situation became more alarming when they threw a glass bottle at the restaurant’s glass doors. Inside were a woman running the restaurant and her young child. What started as an apparent attempt to steal a bicycle had suddenly become a frightening situation for people who were simply going about their day.
The incident made me wonder how often theft, assault and property damage affect communities like Brimbank. Are these offences becoming more common, or do individual incidents make the problem feel bigger than it is? Using recorded crime statistics from Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency, this report explores how these offences have changed over time, how Brimbank compares with other Melbourne areas, and what the data can tell us about crime in everyday settings.
Question: What do theft, assault and property damage statistics reveal about safety in Melbourne’s everyday public spaces?
About the Data
This report uses recorded crime statistics from the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria (CSA), covering the years ending June r first_year to June r latest. Offence rates are presented per 100,000 residents to allow comparisons across different years and areas with different population sizes.
It is important to remember that these statistics only include offences reported to or detected by police. Crimes that go unreported are not captured, so the figures do not represent every offence that occurs in the community.
For the latest reporting year, the CSA used Victoria in Future population estimates to calculate offence rates because the relevant Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) population figures were not yet available.
For this report, I have included only non-family-violence assault offences, as I wanted to focus on crime beyond family and domestic settings. However, this does not mean that all these assaults happened in public places. The dataset does not show where each assault occurred, so these figures cannot tell us exactly how many assaults took place in public spaces.
After witnessing the incident near Sunshine, I started wondering whether crimes like theft, assault and property damage were becoming more common in Brimbank. To explore this, I looked at how the recorded offence rates for these three categories have changed over the past decade.
Line chart of recorded theft, assault and property damage offences per 100,000 population in Brimbank, 2017 to 2026. Hover over a line for exact values; click a legend entry to hide or show an offence type.
Data: Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, Data Tables - Recorded offences, LGA workbook (Table 02; population derived from Table 01).
Looking at Brimbank’s crime trends made me wonder how it compares with other parts of Melbourne. Are theft, assault and property damage rates higher in Brimbank, or are other areas experiencing similar patterns? To find out, I compared Brimbank’s recorded offence rates with those of other Melbourne LGAs for the latest year.
Dot plot comparing Brimbank with other metropolitan Melbourne councils on theft, assault and property damage rates per 100,000 population in the latest year, one panel per offence type. Brimbank is highlighted; hover over a dot for exact values.
Data: Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, Data Tables - Recorded offences, LGA workbook (Table 02; population derived from Table 01). Metropolitan Melbourne councils: the 31 councils in the Victorian Government’s definition, as listed in the code.
After comparing Brimbank with other Melbourne LGAs, I wanted to see how crime rates vary across the city. Are higher offence rates concentrated in certain areas, or are they spread across Melbourne? This map helps explore these differences and shows where Brimbank stands in the bigger picture.
Interactive map of metropolitan Melbourne councils shaded by the combined rate of recorded theft, assault and property damage per 100,000 population in the latest year. Hover over a council for its rate; zoom and pan to explore.
Data: Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, Data Tables - Recorded offences, LGA workbook (Table 02; population derived from Table 01); Geoscape Australia, VIC Local Government Areas administrative boundaries (shapefile).
After looking at crime trends across Melbourne, I wanted to understand where offences are actually being recorded in Brimbank. Do they happen more often in streets and open spaces, around shops and public transport, or in residential areas? This chart explores how recorded offences are distributed across different locations and how these patterns have changed over time.
Bar chart, one panel per year, of the share of ALL recorded offences (every offence type, not only theft, assault and property damage) in Brimbank by type of location: streets, footpaths and open space; public and other transport; retail; homes and their grounds; and other locations. Hover over a bar for exact values.
Data: Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, Data Tables - Recorded offences, LGA workbook (Table 04). This chart shows all recorded offences of every type in Brimbank by location, not only theft, assault and property damage; the location table cannot be broken down by offence type.
The incident near Sunshine started with someone apparently trying to steal a bicycle, so I wanted to return to where this story began. How common is bicycle theft in Brimbank, and how does it compare with neighbouring areas? This final chart takes a closer look at bicycle theft to see what the recorded crime statistics reveal about the problem that first caught my attention.
Line chart of recorded bicycle theft offences per 100,000 population in Brimbank, highlighted, and in the councils that border it, 2017 to 2026. Hover over a line for exact values.
Data: Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, Data Tables - Recorded offences, LGA workbook (Table 02, subgroup B44 Theft of a bicycle; population derived from Table 01). Neighbouring councils are those whose boundaries touch Brimbank (Geoscape boundaries), all within metropolitan Melbourne.
When I witnessed the incident near Sunshine, what stayed with me wasn’t just the attempted bicycle theft, but how quickly the situation affected people who had nothing to do with it. A woman was running her restaurant with her young child inside when an ordinary evening suddenly became frightening. It made me realise that the impact of crime can go beyond what is stolen or damaged.
Looking at Brimbank’s crime statistics gave me a better understanding of the bigger picture. Theft rates increased from around 2,650 offences per 100,000 residents in 2017 to 3,528 in 2026, with a particularly noticeable rise after 2022. However, assault and property damage did not follow the same pattern. This showed me that different types of crime can change in very different ways, and it would be misleading to assume that all crime is increasing at the same rate.
The bicycle theft data was particularly interesting because it brought me back to the incident that started this investigation. Brimbank’s bicycle theft rate peaked at around 85 offences per 100,000 residents in 2024 before falling to approximately 60 in 2026. Several neighbouring councils also recorded much higher rates than Brimbank. This reminded me that one frightening experience does not necessarily mean an area has the highest crime rate.
At the same time, these statistics cannot capture every offence or tell us exactly how safe people feel in their neighbourhoods. For me, the biggest takeaway is that crime is not just about what gets stolen or damaged, but also about the people whose everyday lives are affected. I hope this report encourages readers to look beyond individual incidents, understand what the evidence actually shows, and think about how we can make our communities safer without unfairly judging the places or people who live there.
Offences (source 1): I downloaded the Crime Statistics Agency Victoria recorded-offence workbook by local government area (LGA), July 2016 to June 2026, and read Tables 01, 02 and 04 from the Excel file. Boundaries (source 2): I used the Geoscape administrative boundaries for Victorian LGAs (shapefile) for the map and to find the councils that border Brimbank. I merged councils split into several shapes into one and simplified the shapes so the map loads quickly.
Names: I trimmed the LGA names and aligned two spellings (Colac Otway, Merri-Bek) so the two sources join.
Rates: I worked out each council’s population for each year from Table 01 (offences divided by rate, times 100,000). I calculated each offence group’s rate as its offence count divided by that population, times 100,000, so every group uses the same population base.
Offence groups: I defined theft as subgroups B41 to B44 and B49, assault as non-family-violence serious and common assault (A212 and A232), and property damage as B21, B22 and B29. I did not count receiving stolen goods or fare evasion as theft.
Metropolitan Melbourne: I used the 31 councils in the Victorian Government’s definition of metropolitan Melbourne.
Limits: recorded offences are not all crime. The location table (plot 4) is by council and location type only, so it cannot show where theft, assault or damage in particular occurred*
I used ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude as supporting tools while completing this assignment. I mainly used them to improve the grammar, sentence structure and clarity of my writing, and to get suggestions on how to organise my data story. I also used AI to help me understand certain R functions, troubleshoot technical issues in RStudio, and identify relevant data sources and references.
I reviewed the suggestions before including them in my work. The topic selection, analysis of the data, interpretation of the visualisations and final decisions were my own.
Crime Statistics Agency. (2026). Crime Statistics Agency data tables - Recorded offences [Data set]. Victorian Government. https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/data-tables-recorded-offences
Geoscape Australia. (2026). VIC local government areas - Geoscape administrative boundaries [Data set]. Australian Government. https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/vic-local-government-areas-geoscape-administrative-boundaries
Victorian Government. (2018). Victoria state and metropolitan Melbourne LGA maps [Map]. https://www.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-08/8-Vic-State-and-Metro-Melb-LGA-maps-30May18_1.PDF