You can use the dashboard to track crime in your area, find out if a particular offence such as car thefts or burglaries is becoming more frequent and compare crime rates throughout the state. There is detailed information for every suburb in the state and more than 100 types of crime - it's easy to find what you are looking for. Here are some of the most interesting things we have found in the data: Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video

The area with the biggest increase in total crimes recorded The area with the biggest increase in total crime reports over the past decade is Craigieburn, in Melbourne’s north. Last year there were 4359 incidents in this area, twice as many as there were 10 years ago. But the population of this area has also almost doubled over the past decade, so once you look at the crime rate in the area that change is not as dramatic. The areas with the highest and lowest crime rates Some of the areas with the highest overall crime rates in Melbourne include Campbellfield, Collingwood, Fitzroy, St Kilda and Broadmeadows.

In regional Victoria, the areas with the highest crime rates are Hazelwood, Shepparton, Moe, Mildura, Traralgon and Bendigo. Melbourne Airport and Laverton North also have high crime rates, but that’s because these areas have a very low residential population, which distorts the data. That happens for a lot of sparsely populated areas, where one or two additional crimes a year can blow out the apparent crime rate. Areas where the crime rate has been increasing in Melbourne include Campbellfield, Corio and Frankston North. Areas where the crime rate has been increasing in regional Victoria include Hazelwood, Moe and Traralgon.

A swathe of suburbs in Melbourne’s east have among the lowest crime rates in Melbourne. Balwyn North, Kew East, Glen Iris and Mont Albert have a crime rate about half that of the rest of Victoria. The state's most commonly recorded crime By far, the most commonly reported crime in the state is theft from a motor vehicle.

Over the past decade there have been 473,814 reports of cars being broken into and things like wallets, phones or number plates being stolen. Almost 14 per cent of crimes reported to police - about one in seven - is a theft from a car. It’s the most common crime in two-thirds of metropolitan postcodes. Residential burglaries are the most common crime in some seaside postcodes including Rye, Rosebud West, Inverloch and Balnarring. It's also the most common crime in Clyde, a suburb in Melbourne’s south-east where thousands of new homes have been built in the past few years.

In Chirnside Park, Cheltenham and Keilor Downs, the most common crime is theft from a shop, which is not surprising given these postcodes are dominated by large shopping centres. In Mornington, drunk and disorderly behaviour offences are the most common crime; in Stawell it's drug possession; in Healesville it's breaching a family violence intervention order; while in Frankston, Ringwood and Broadmeadows, the most common crime is breaching bail conditions. Some other common crimes include assaults (which make up 9.1 per cent of crime reports), residential burglaries (8.7 per cent), car thefts (4.1 per cent) and drug offences (3.7 per cent). Homicides are among the least common crimes that police encounter and make up 0.05 per cent of reports. Loading

The crime that is surging the most The crime that has increased the most in the past decade is breaching a family violence intervention order. This made up 1.3 per cent of reports to police in 2009, but now it makes up 5 per cent. It’s a crime police responded to 42 times a day on average last year. But that increase is also driven by the fact more family violence intervention orders are being issued by the courts - about 30,000 each year.

There has also been an increase in reports of breaching bail conditions over the past decade. This crime made up 4.4 per cent of reports last year (an average of 32 times a day). A crime that is becoming less frequent is criminal damage to property - things like broken windows and smashed letterboxes. This used to be the most common crime police were called out to but there has been a steady reduction over the past decade. The state of residential burglaries Last year there were 28,337 residential burglaries in Victoria, or about three every hour on average. The areas that have seen the biggest increases in burglaries in the past decade are largely fast-growing areas on Melbourne’s fringe such as Cranbourne, Clyde and Craigieburn. In 2009, there were six burglaries in Clyde but at their peak in 2016-17 there were 217.

That’s partly because criminals target new estates. Many of them are sparsely populated, leaving homes surrounded by still-vacant lots. Loading You can see how burglary numbers have changed in your area by using our interactive, but there are some caveats about how we have displayed the crime rate. All rates in the dashboard are calculated on a per capita basis. This is a good measure for most crimes, but the per capita rate can be misleading for home break-ins, due to variations in household sizes in different parts of Melbourne.

On Melbourne’s growing fringe, the number of people in a household is larger than average, so the per capita rate is not an accurate comparison for the inner city where household sizes are smaller. A better measure would be the rate of break-ins by household, however this cannot be displayed in the current version of the interactive. For example, while St Kilda ranks seventh among metropolitan postcodes on a per capita basis for residential break-ins, it ranks 21st on the rate of break-ins by household. About one in every nine home burglaries last year was classed as aggravated, which means the resident was inside the house at the time. However, this does not necessarily mean the victim came into direct contact with the crook. Home invasions, where a group of assailants carry out a home burglary and often go out of their way to antagonise the occupant, are bundled into the data on aggravated burglaries. It is not possible to tease out how many home invasions there have been in a selected postcode.

The number and rate of non-aggravated residential burglaries reached a 10-year low last year, but 2017-18 was the third-worst year in the past decade for aggravated home break-ins. The figures also show that aggravated burglaries are making up a larger proportion of residential burglaries than they once did. In 2008-09, five per cent of home burglaries were aggravated, now the proportion is 10.9 per cent. The area where the most crimes are recorded The Melbourne CBD has by far the highest crime rate in the state, but that’s because it’s a place where hundreds of thousands of people go to work or socialise every day.

Its crime rate is about six times higher than the rest of Victoria. However, keep in mind that crime rates are based on the resident population and for a place like the CBD, the visiting population is always much higher. In real terms, there has been a steady drop in crimes recorded in the CBD over the past decade. In the 12 months to June 2018 there were 16,602 criminal incidents in the CBD, that’s 1225 fewer than there were a decade ago. One of the most common crimes in the CBD is being drunk and disorderly - there were 1401 cases, which made up 8.45 per cent of the area's police reports.

There were 1379 cases of thefts from retail stores - a 10-year low. That might also be influenced by the fact there has been a steady decline in retail establishments in the city over the past decade. On the flipside, there was a 10-year high in fraud cases, people nabbed possessing drugs, and bike thefts in the city last year. What would you like to know? The interactive allows you to explore the data for your area and compare its crime rate to the rest of Melbourne or the entire state. You can also dig deeper and choose the type of crime you would like to investigate. For example, you could see how graffiti incidents have played out in your area over the past decade.

If you notice something interesting or something that jumps out at you, let us know.