When the Crime Statistics Agency recently released Victoria’s crime statistics for 2024-25, it revealed that the state saw a record high number of criminal incidents, with over 483,000 incidents over the course of the financial year.
But going through the numbers, one stat really jumped out at readers: Victoria Police reported that just 5,400 repeat offenders accounted for 40% of the state’s total crime.
Source: ABC News
Less than 0.08% of Victoria’s total population was responsible for over 193,000 crimes.
Of those 5,400 individuals, they committed an average of 35.7 crimes per year or roughly 1 crime every 10.2 days.
If we look at the whole cohort as a collective, Victoria sees one of them commit a crime in the state every 2.7 minutes.
One of the most notable classes of offences where crime is currently surging is car theft.
If we shift our point of reference to insurance claims for car theft, in 2024-25 the number of cars being reported stolen to insurers rose by 59%.
The chart below, sourced from the Australian Financial Review, demonstrates that the Victorian metro area leads the country in car theft, reporting more than three times as many vehicles to insurers as metro New South Wales.
According to the numbers from Victoria Police, in the 12 months to the end of March, 31,551 cars were stolen in Victoria, the highest level in 23 years, and a 47.1% increase on a rolling 12-month basis.
While crime is an increasingly concerning issue across much of the nation, the data indicates that the relatively tiny pool of reoffenders are committing a crime every 2.7 minutes in Victoria, which should be low-hanging fruit for policymakers and the judiciary.
If crime in Victoria could be reduced by potentially over one-third by simply getting 5,400 people off the state’s streets, that seems like it would be a slam dunk strategy in the eyes of the public.
Although some may find them politically or ideologically undesirable, serious issues rarely present with such obvious and relatively inexpensive solutions.
