It’s a well known fact that Canberra has one of the lowest crime rates for a capital city in Australia, as well as being one of the safest cities in the world. While some Canberrans will say that this is because nothing ever happens in Canberra, it doesn’t mean that the ACT is not subject to no crime at all. Each year, the team at The Canberra Post examines the crime rates and data surrounding crime based on district/region and residential area. If you missed our 2021 segment on this subject, you can check out our article on Canberra Suburbs Ranked by Crime Rates. In this article, we will discuss the regions in the ACT, categories of offences, overall crime data in the ACT and the residential areas with the highest and lowest offence rates in Canberra for 2022.
Districts in the Australian Capital Territory
In the ACT, our residential areas are divided into 8 different areas, or districts. Some say there are more districts in the ACT, depending on your source of information, but for the purposes of this exercise of determining which residential area has the highest amount of crimes in ACT for 2022 – we will be using the following 8 areas, based on the ACT Police Crime Statistics website: Inner South, Inner North, Woden, Weston Creek, Tuggeranong, Belconnen, Gungahlin and Molonglo Valley.
Offences explained based on statistics in Canberra
Before we get into the areas with the highest and lowest crime rates for 2022 in ACT, we need to examine how the offences are broken down. ACT Policing produces a map of the ACT in the form of crime stats each quarter. This map details numbers in each residential area and region based on the offence type:
- Assault
- Home burglaries and other burglaries
- Robbery (including unarmed and armed robberies)
- Homicide (includes attempted murder and manslaughter)
- Sexual assault
- Other offences against the person
- Stolen motor vehicles
- Property damage
- Theft (excluding car theft and other motor vehicle theft)
- Other offences (deception, environmental, weaponry, drug, public order and driving offences)
ACT’s overall crime over the recent years
Over the last four years, according to the Australian Federal Police,reported crime in the ACT has had an overall decrease. This has occurred all while our population has grown from 395,790 in 2016 to 452,670 in 2021 (according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics) and the ACT is on track to crack half a million residents by 2027. In the year of 2019, the number of total offences was 34,289. In 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were 30,869 offences recorded. 2021 saw a steady decline of offences, with just 29,451 reported. Just last year in 2022, we saw another decline, with 27,403 offences reported.
This information can also be broken down into types of offences, as listed above. In comparing the statistics for 2021 and 2022, most types of offences were lower in 2022 than they were in 2021, while reported assaults, robberies and other offences against the person were higher in 2022 than they were in the previous year.
Canberra’s crime data shows that the ACT sits significantly lower for levels of crime than the national average. The national average for the crime index is at 46.16% whereas the ACT comes in at 26.1%. This figure also makes the capital of Australia the lowest for crime across all capital cities in our nation.
Canberra suburbs based on crime rates
Based on the data presented from ACT Policing, the information isn’t clear cut as to which residential area has the highest amount of crimes as one would think. The following figures are all relative and factors in population, density and overall area size that can result in the numbers seeming off or wrong to some. Here, we have taken into account the crime numbers for each residential area and their population to create a percentage of crime reported for the year of 2022. It’s important to note that the percentage could possibly be skewed if there are repeat offenders included in these numbers but unfortunately, we do not have the data around this from our policing system. The overall results are reflective of reported crime in the ACT.
Canberra suburbs with the highest crime rate
The residential area with the highest amount of crimes for 2022 in ACT is the suburb of Oaks Estate, just next to the Canberra Airport and Queanbeyan. While this suburb is small in size and population, it had the highest amount of crime reported based on the population of the residential area. Oaks Estate is home to 375 people, according to the 2021 census, and the amount of offences disclosed for the residential area was 75. While this number sounds low, this is a whopping 20% of the population of the area. The category with the most amount of offences disclosed in Oaks Estate was ‘other offences’ which includes deception and related offences, environmental, weapons, drugs, driving and public order offences. A close second category was theft (excluding stolen vehicles). The current median price for housing in Oaks Estate was $706,000 in 2022.
If we are basing our data purely on the number of offences in each ACT residential area, the area that had the largest amount of offences occurred was in the suburb of Kambah, in Tuggeranong with 697 crimes reported to police. While this number is higher than the amount reported to Oaks Estate, the population of Kambah in 2021 was 15,670. This means that the total percentage of total crimes reported for the area of Kambah in 2022 is 4.45% of the area’s population. Similar to Oaks Estate, other offences were the highest statistic of offences disclosed in Kambah. This was closely followed by theft in the area. The current median price for housing in Kambah was $855,000 in 2022.
Canberra suburbs with the lowest crime rate
The residential area with the lowest incidents that occurred in 2022 was in the area of Macarthur, which only had 7 crimes reported over the course of 2022. With a relatively low population, the overall percentage of crimes reported based on population there comes in at a total of 0.50% of the residential area. The category with the most offences disclosed was tied between property damage and other offences with only 2 offences disclosed in each of these categories over 2022. The median house dwelling price in Macarthur in 2022 was $755,000.
The residential area with the second lowest number of criminal incidents in 2022 was the area of Fraser in Belconnen. 45 crimes were reported during this period in Fraser which has a population of 2,126. This makes the overall percentage of crimes reported in the Fraser area sit at 2.12%.Similar to the other areas, the highest category of offences disclosed for the area of Fraser was other offences then closely followed by property damage. The median house price in Fraser in 2022 was $935,000.
Offences in the ACT
Canberrans are generally very well behaved, law abiding citizens. Lifestyle in the ACT is also heavily commended across Australia as it’s a great place for families to live. While any city or town will have its issues with crime, the ACT is relatively a low risk place to live regardless of what area you choose to reside in the ACT. To report a crime that has been committed in the ACT, contact Crime Stoppers via their website or phone. There are also support services for Victims of Crime that are available to anyone in the community that has been a victim of any crime.