Crime data for every suburb of Perth revealed by WA Police

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Detailed crime statistics of every suburb in Perth during the past decade have been released — and you can explore them here.

A homicide cluster in Perth's north-eastern suburbs, a mysterious spike in fraud and the worst areas for crime across the city — these are just some of insights from a trove of crime data released by WA Police.

In a transparency-boosting move late last year, WA Police released crime statistics dating back to June 2007 on a detailed website which is being updated regularly.

The ABC has used these statistics to create a searchable database of crime in every suburb in Perth.

Have you found anything that's worth investigating? Email abcnewswa@your.abc.net.au

Through this data, we've been able to surface information like the worst suburbs across the metropolitan area for crime activity.

We'd like to hear the stories behind the statistics in your suburb. Let us know what you find or what you're keen to know more about.

Here are some interesting things we discovered while exploring the data.

The northern suburbs 'homicide hotspot'

While we weren't surprised to learn that the Perth CBD recorded the biggest number of homicide charges in the decade between June 2007 and June 2017, we were intrigued by a trend which became clear after we mapped the homicide-heavy suburbs.

What stands out is a swathe of neighbouring north-eastern suburbs — Nollamara, Balga, Dianella and Girrawheen — with big numbers of charges.

If you dig deeper into the statistics, you'll also find adjacent suburbs which also have significant results — for example, Yokine with eight and Mirrabooka and Morley with six apiece.

It should be pointed out that homicide charges incorporate charges of murder, attempted/conspiracy to murder, manslaughter and driving causing death.

Another thing to remember is these statistics reflect the number of charges laid for an offence, not the number of victims or offenders.

This can muddy the picture if many people are charged over one incident or if one person is charged multiple times with the same offence.

For example, there was a murder in Girrawheen in 2016 over which four people were charged with homicide offences. So each figure does not necessarily represent one murder

Karrinyup's crime spike

You might notice some big anomalies exploring this data and these can distort a snapshot of a suburb or crime.

We were surprised to see the comfortable middle-class suburb of Karrinyup with one of the highest numbers of sexual offences in the metropolitan area, with 592 charges over a decade.

But look more closely at the data and you'll see 506 of these charges were laid in 2010-11.

Take that figure out of the system and Karrinyup's statistics are comparable to its neighbour, Gwelup.

We have asked WA Police for more information on this.

Crime spreads in new suburbs

You'll notice many of the distortions in the data come from some of Perth's newer suburbs.

Looking at this graph of Alkimos crime, you'd think its residents had been under siege from a crime wave.

But a decade ago, the northern coastal suburb had so few residents that the Australian Bureau of Statistics published no population data for it in its 2006 census.

Today, it has a population of 6,000 — and, unsurprisingly, its number of criminal offences soared by 9220 per cent between 2007 and 2017.

Likewise, it's worth remembering the population of the overall Perth metropolitan area has surged since 2007.

Back then, 1.6 million people lived in Perth, a figure which grew by more than 28 per cent to more than two million last year.

Over that period of time it looks like crime rates have grown more slowly, only about 2.6 per cent from 186,688 total charges in 2007 to 191,488 in 2017.

But the real picture is not so clear cut, with plenty of fluctuations in the number of charges in the years between.

At its peak, almost 210,000 charges were laid in Perth's metropolitan area in one year (2015-16), dropping to a low point of 150,753 in 2009-10 — that's a difference of about 39 per cent.

A surge in fraud

One trend which piqued our interest was a surprising surge in fraud charges across the metropolitan area between 2012 and 2014.

This was a time when Perth residents had the highest average gross income of any city dwellers in the country.

In 2012-13 and 2013-14, there were more than 20,000 fraud charges laid, compared to about 12,000 in 2011-12.

This trend was strongest in the Perth CBD, which recorded more than one-third of all its fraud offences over the decade in this period.

Cybercrime expert Dr Peter Hannay from Edith Cowan University in Joondalup said this fraud spike could be partly explained by new tools used by tech-savvy criminals.

"Of course we can't be completely certain about what's behind these statistics," he said.

"But the two largest things behind the spikes that we've seen are most likely the release of pay wave [payments] — if only because people were paying more attention to their credit cards — and the launch of large ransomware campaigns."

Dr Hannay said cyber-fraud used similar principles to traditional fraud but was enabled by technology which was changing all the time.

"When it comes to the other types of financial fraud — malware, all this kinds of stuff — the police are working in conjunction with the banks to identify and bring people behind them to justice," he said.

Perth vs. Northbridge

Like any entertainment district worth its red lights, Northbridge has attracted its fair share of criminal activity over the years.

So you may be surprised to learn that the Perth CBD has far more offences than Northbridge — although this is partly explained by the bigger population of people living, working and travelling through the city.

But Northbridge has been one of the notable suburbs to record a drop in crime.

A decade ago, 3,546 charges were laid. Last year, there were only 2,445.

This downward trend had already started when then-premier Colin Barnett controversially said in 2009 he wouldn't take his family there for dinner on a weekend.

Offences in Northbridge hit their lowest point in 2012-13, the year the first full fringe festival was held.

Drug offences have pushed charge numbers upwards in recent years, but statistics suggest Northbridge has become a much safer place than it used to be.

Data notes

Crime statistics are extracted quarterly from the WA Police Force Incident Management System.

Crime statistics are provisional and subject to change.

For an explanation of offence types and terminology and the methodology underpinning the production of WA Crime Statistics, please view the explanatory material at the WA Police website.

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Topics: law-crime-and-justice, crime, crime-prevention, fraud-and-corporate-crime, murder-and-manslaughter, courts-and-trials, armed-robbery, arson, assault, burglary, drug-offences, vandalism, police, perth-6000, northbridge-6003, karrinyup-6018, alkimos-6038