Crime surge rocks Victoria
Roger Franklin
February 22, 2008 12:00am

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...2-2862,00.html

VICTORIA has witnessed staggering rises in assaults over the past five years, with Melbourne and the outer suburbs hardest hit.

In the metropolitan area, Melton tops the list, registering a 160.6 per cent increase from 226 to 589 cases reported in 2007.

Close behind is Casey, where assaults jumped from 595 to 1358 over the same period, an increase of 128.2 per cent.

Moreland, Mornington, Wyndham and Cardinia are close behind, all seeing five-year increases in excess of 100 per cent.

...and this article is reminding me how Dublin had been starting to go when we left it in 2002.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-dep...467381241.html

ALMOST three-quarters of Melburnians think the city is becoming more violent, an Age/Nielsen poll has found.

SHOCK! HORROR! Someone please get the rose-tinted specs for those who don't believe there is crime in Australia, or have you been watching Underbelly to much? Oh, that's right, you guys can't watch it yet.

Just to put this into some perspective these are the official figures for Crime in Manchester UK for 2006-2007.

And this is just reported crime in the City and NOT Greater Manchester as a whole.

Violent crime against a person 14420
Burglary dwelling offences 7277
Theft from a vehicle 11246
Theft of a vehicle 3925
Robbery 3660

Makes Melbourne look like utopia doesn't it.

I'm not so sure if utopia is the right word.

50,331 burglaries, 31,000 assaults, 1,358 armed robberies, 1,631 rapes, 42,138 crimes against the person.

That's Victoria as a whole, but the population is heavily weighted around Melbourne. Probably better than Perth though.

If you don't want crime don't live in a big city, live in the country, maybe an hour or two outside a city, much better lifestyle much less crime.

I agree with the hour out of town idea.
You can usually get more property for your money and a bigger plot of land but then you have to offset that with the daily commute as most jobs are in town.
I currently do a 90min commute each way to work (for 30 miles) and the OH does an hour and a quarter to travel 18miles.
We don't want to fall into the trap of just moving for the better weather and still having the daily grind in heavy traffic.
We are both determined to reduce the length of our commute and therefore working day.

australia dwarfs the uk for burglaries, basically cos it's much easier to do.
most houses in australia are detached bungalows, and a lot of uk houses are terraced and 2 storey and have double glazing which makes it a bit harder still.also the police in the uk come down harder on burglary, and even do forensic tests which i don't think they do here in oz(to my knowledge)

car thefts are roughly the same nationally, although certain london boroughs and bristol for example r extremely high.

as for robberies, it is higher in the uk, ESPECIALLY london.(look at bbc cracking crime), it makes anywhere in oz or manchester look like nothing in that respect

and assaults are higher in uk, according to stats ther isn't a huge diifference but in reality i can guarentee there is.
WHY?. cos in uk there is far more stigma or fear about "grassing" someone up, less of this type of crime is reported by far, due to the fact that the areas in the uk are more cramped and everyone seems to be linked in some way(theres a good chance the person who assaulted you knows your friends, or your friends friends, and can find out where you live)
i know of two blokes who were stabbed, and did not report it, one of which got revenge by stabbing his assailent back which also wasn't reported.
also a bloke who was badly glassed in the face who also didn't report it
and a friend of mine who was beaten up by 4 blokes, who responded by stabbing two them at a later date, which was not reported
and i once had a bottle smashed over my head and lost a pint of blood and responde by beating the living crap out of him 3 weeks later smashing his jaw bone under the sole of my foot(neither was reported)
the assault rate in london is at least 4 times higher than nsw per capita, which does not include unreported ones

Surely a big part of this increase is due to the ever expanding population in those areas. Take Wyndham & Casey for example. The areas have seen a huge increase in population within the last 5 years.

Well thats my two pennies anyway!!!

As with anywhere else in the world, where you live is a huge factor.

We live in Rosanna. Our house has no alarm system, no double glazing or window locks. In the 3 years we have lived here so far there has been no crime in our immediate area that we have been aware of. No hoons, no crazy night life. Simply nice and quiet and leafy, just the way we like it.

It's worth doing your homework on the area you are intending to live in. Pop into the local police station and ask them about the area if you have any nagging doubts about it.

I do think that for most who are thinking about moving to Oz and have done there research!

Melbourne has the lowest (per capita) rate of violent crime of any Australian capital city.

Melbourne is so popular if the growth continues at its current rate, Melbourne could become Australia's largest city once again by 2028.

I reckon street crime is at it's worst since the mid 70's presently, that after a very quiet period in the nineties.

It's been on an upward trend with the youth here and the UK but seems to be going backwards in the USA for some reason. The best example seems to be the greater likleyhood of home invasions whilst having a party. These party invasions seemed to start in ernest at the end of the 90's and early 2000's and are at epedemic proportions now.

I've said it before, there is a quantum change in the youths outlook, something to do with communication and the net. I reckon the change is almost as big as the change society went through in the 60's. Although I cannot work out why these trends don't seem as prominent in the US.

My older two daughters were hardly affected by these changes, and I didn't notice many problems, save for the party issues in the late 90's. Whereas I'm dead worried about my 10 year old boy, and the very great likelyhood that he will strike street trouble.

I read that you visited Sydney for the w/end recently. Did you venture out at night on the w/end?

I was down there recently myself and have never seen so many tossers trying to be hard (especially around George and Pitt St) around 9pm on a Sat night. Of course not a cop to be seen anywhere.

Just wondering how it compared. I felt safe in Melb. Few drunks around but noone who looked like they'd stab you for fun.

Maybe I was lucky, but never noticed anything amiss. Only place I've ever spotted any problems in Melbourne though, are around Southbank, & that tends not to be a issue for me, more when two groups of "lads" come together.

The point I made is that there presently seems to be an element of Gang culture around that I havn't witnessed in a long while. I cannot work out why this should be the case though.