Lauren Ferri, Daily Mail, December 2, 2019

Editor’s Note: Australia mostly shies away from providing explicit demographic data. But there are still ways of gleaning a genetic picture of its cities. For example, 27.9 percent of the population of Townsville has at least one parent that was born outside of Australia. And another 7.2 percent of the city is “Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people.” In Darwin, 42.3 percent of the population has at least one parent that was born outside of Australia and another 8.7 percent of its population is “Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people.”

Darwin is now considered more dangerous than several capital cities in Africa and South and Central America.

A traveller-supplied database lists Darwin at 56th spot in the Numbeo Crime Rankings – ahead of Nairobi in Kenya, Guadalajara in Mexico, Bogota in Colombia and Brasilia in Brazil.

Townsville, Queensland, also makes the ‘worst 100’ rankings, coming in at 62nd, with worse crime than Harare, Zimbabwe and Jacksonville in Florida.

The list names 356 of the worst criminal locations in the world, using a scale between zero and 100 to estimate the level of crime in cities.

Both Townsville and Darwin are considered to have a ‘high’ level of crime, with Darwin recording a rating of 60.98 and Townsville a rating of 60.29.

While the ratings are high compared to other cities, the worst criminal hotspot in the world is believed to be Caracas in Venezuela with a rating of 84.92.

Sitting in second place is Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea at 84.06 and third is Pietermaritzburg in South Africa with a rating of 81.92.

Townsville Labor MP Coralee O’Rourke said comparing the city to other crime hotpots was ‘offensive to residents’, Nine News reported.

But when it comes to figuring out a solution to the growing youth crime problem, ‘nothing is off the table’.

The regional Queensland city has found to have a high rate of break-ins, car theft, drug use and property damage.

Over the past 12 months Queensland police statistics revealed there were a total of 31,932 offences, with 3,005 related to break-ins, 2,232 for property damage and 6,104 for drug offences.

Townsville also has a very low ‘safety index’ as many people do not feel safe walking through the city alone at night.

Ms. O’Rourke said there has been a growing youth crime problem and admitted there needs to be something done about it.

‘We know that crime is an issue and everyone in Townsville deserves the right to feel safe,’ she said.

Meanwhile crime has also increased in Darwin over the past three years, with worries about homes being broken into sitting high on the crime index.

The safety index is also low, with most people feeling unsafe while walking through Darwin alone at night.

The biggest offence in Darwin is property damage, with 1,984 reported in the last year alone, closely followed by assault with 1,707 offences recorded in the past year.

Overall for the 12 month period ending September 2019 compared to the year prior, the total reported offences in Darwin dropped by 5 per cent.