How to read the Australian crime map
Every council area in Australia is shaded by its recorded crime rate: offences per 100,000 residents, so a shire of four thousand people and a city of two million sit on the same scale.
Where the numbers come from
The figures are the police services' own. Each state and territory publishes recorded crime differently — different categories, different periods, different geographies — and the pipeline behind this map standardises them into one ANZSOC-aligned set so they can be put side by side.
What the lighter shading means
Not every publisher releases every category for every year. Where a figure is missing, the map can estimate it from the nearest published years and the national series, and paints those areas lighter. A ≈ marks any number that was modelled rather than published, and every estimate carries a confidence.
Reading a single area
- Crime Score is a composite: violent and property offences weighted and indexed so areas can be ranked.
- Trend compares the latest complete period with five years earlier.
- Suburb figures appear where the state publishes them.
Turn estimates off from the legend if you only want figures a police service has actually released.