The Omen Report

Updated 26 July 2026

Melbourne is not a city in collapse. Nor is the concern about crime simply a media invention.

In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2026 Global Liveability Index, Melbourne ranked third in the world. At the same time, Victoria’s recorded crime rate remains substantially higher than it was three years ago, vehicle theft is at a two-decade high, and children remain heavily over-represented in robbery, carjacking and home-invasion statistics.

Both things can be true.

The evidence points to a serious but uneven crime problem: concentrated among repeat offenders, driven heavily by theft and vehicle crime, and made more visible by confronting home invasions, carjackings, knife attacks and organised-crime recruitment.

Important data note: most frequently quoted crime figures cover all of Victoria—not Melbourne alone. They should not be used to imply that every suburb or regional community is experiencing the same conditions.

1. From Moomba to the present: four distinct periods

2016–2018: real offending, racialised politics

Disorder at Melbourne’s 2016 Moomba Festival helped turn the loosely defined “Apex” group into a major media and political issue.

Some offending was real and serious. However, academic research later described the wider “African gangs” narrative as a racialised moral panic in which individual crimes were repeatedly presented as evidence of a broad ethnic threat.

Crime Statistics Agency figures showed Sudan-born people represented approximately 1.1% of Victoria’s unique alleged offender population in 2017–18. That was a small share of total offending, although still an over-representation compared with their share of Victoria’s population. Sudan-born alleged offenders were also more heavily represented in particular categories, including aggravated burglary.

That distinction matters. Saying an entire community caused Victoria’s crime problem was false. Pretending there was no over-representation in some serious categories would also have been misleading.

Sources: RMIT ABC Fact Check; British Journal of Criminology research.

2019–2022: falling crime and pandemic distortion

Victoria’s recorded-offence rate generally declined after its 2016–17 high point and fell sharply during the pandemic years. Lockdowns changed movement, shopping, nightlife, public transport use and opportunities for street and property crime. This makes the pandemic period a poor baseline for judging what “normal” crime should look like.

Victoria’s prison population also fell from 8,101 people in 2019 to 5,918 in June 2024. But reduced imprisonment does not, by itself, prove that later crime was caused by releases, bail decisions or judicial leniency.

Source: Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council.

2023–2025: the sharp rebound

Crime rose quickly after the pandemic-era low. In the 12 months to June 2025, Victoria recorded:

• 483,583 criminal incidents, up 18.3%
• 638,640 recorded offences, up 15.7%
• an offence rate of 8,998.9 per 100,000 people, up 13.8%

Theft from vehicles, motor-vehicle theft, retail theft, family violence and repeat offending were major contributors.

Victoria Police said 5,400 people charged ten or more times during that year were responsible for approximately 40% of recorded offending.

Source: Crime Statistics Agency figures reported by ABC News.

Early 2026: improvement, but not a return to normal

The year ending March 2026 produced signs that the surge may have peaked. Victoria recorded 625,426 offences, a decrease of 0.2%. After population growth was considered, the offence rate fell 1.9%. Criminal incidents fell 1.0%, while their population-adjusted rate fell 2.7%.

Youth alleged-offender incidents fell 6% to 22,654—the first annual reduction since the pandemic. But adult alleged-offender incidents rose 10.8%, driven partly by retail theft, breaches of bail and breaches of family-violence orders. Retail-theft incidents rose 11.7%.

Victoria Police warned overall crime remained approximately 26% higher than three years earlier. A 0.2% annual reduction is encouraging, but it is not evidence the wider problem has been solved.

Sources: Victorian Government crime-data release; ABC News analysis.

2. What modern offending looks like

Vehicle theft and electronic vulnerabilities

More than 31,000 vehicles were stolen in the year to March 2026—the highest figure since 2001–02. Police estimate key-mimicking or key-cloning technology is involved in approximately 30% to 40% of vehicle thefts.

Home invasions, carjackings and youth offending

In the year to March 2026, people under 18 were allegedly responsible for approximately:

• 60% of robberies
• 55% of carjackings
• 49% of home invasions
• 48% of aggravated burglaries

These figures do not mean most young people offend—or that young people commit most crime overall. They show a relatively small group of repeat young offenders is concentrated in some of the most serious property and violent offences.

Source: ABC News youth-offending analysis.

Knife crime and the Cobblebank murders

On 6 September 2025, 15-year-old Dau Akueng and 12-year-old Chol Achiek were killed while returning home from basketball in Cobblebank. Police alleged masked attackers armed with machetes and other long-edged weapons targeted the boys, possibly through mistaken identity. Eight people were subsequently charged in connection with the killings.

The case did not cause Victoria’s machete ban. Machetes had already been classified as prohibited weapons from 1 September 2025—five days before the killings.

Sources: ABC News on the Cobblebank charges; Victoria Police machete laws.

Retail theft and the illicit-tobacco economy

Retail theft is no longer limited to isolated shoplifting. Some groups systematically target easily resold products. Victoria’s illicit-tobacco market has also produced an extended campaign of arson, intimidation and extortion.

It is more accurate to say tobacco excise helped create a price gap that organised crime exploited—not that tax increases directly caused every arson attack.

Source: Reuters.

3. Why did crime rise?

There is no credible evidence that one politician, one ethnic group or one bail amendment single-handedly created Victoria’s crime surge. Better-supported drivers include:

• Cost-of-living pressure: financial stress and increases in retail and property theft.
• Repeat offending: a small, highly active cohort accounts for a disproportionate amount of crime.
• Youth disconnection: family instability, school disengagement, trauma and unemployment.
• Social media: stolen vehicles, weapons and confrontations can be used for attention and status.
• Organised-crime recruitment: adult networks can pay or pressure children to commit theft, arson and violence.
• Technological vulnerability: keyless vehicles and online markets create new opportunities.
• Police resourcing: Victoria Police was attempting to fill more than 1,500 vacancies in 2026.

Source: Victoria Police Youth Gang Strategy.

4. Bail laws: reform, reversal and accountability

Victoria changed its bail laws in 2023, with major provisions taking effect in March 2024. Following the sharp increase in serious and repeat offending, the government reversed direction in 2025. It reinstated bail offences, expanded tougher bail tests, prioritised community safety and removed the explicit rule that remanding a child should be a last resort.

Labor has governed Victoria since 2014 and must be held accountable for policing resources, youth-justice capacity, legislative decisions and whether its responses work. But claiming crime rose because judges were appointed by Labor—or simply because the government has been in office for a long time—is political inference, not demonstrated causation.

Sources: Victorian bail reforms; ABS prisoner data.

5. The police response

Operation Trinity was established in 2023 to target repeat burglars and vehicle thieves across Greater Melbourne. Between March 2023 and June 2024, police made more than 1,400 arrests connected to 1,537 burglaries in which vehicles were stolen. Police said approximately 95% of those vehicles were recovered.

Operation Alliance is Victoria Police’s dedicated response to serious youth-gang offending. During 2025, police reportedly arrested youth-gang members an average of four times per day and laid approximately 4,300 charges.

Sources: Victoria Police on Operation Trinity; ABC News on police recruitment; ABC News on returning officers.

6. Demographics without distortion

Country of birth is not the same as ethnicity, gang membership or immigration status. It is misleading to suggest growth in an “unspecified” birthplace category proves authorities are concealing ethnic offending.

The responsible position is more demanding: acknowledge genuine over-representation where reliable data shows it, investigate why it exists, and target the individuals and networks causing harm without treating an entire racial community as collectively guilty.

Conclusion: neither a hoax nor a city in collapse

Victoria experienced a genuine and steep post-pandemic increase in crime, driven heavily by theft, vehicle crime, repeat offending, family violence and a small cohort of highly active adult and youth offenders.

The latest figures suggest the surge may have peaked. But a 0.2% reduction cannot erase a three-year increase, more than 31,000 stolen vehicles, or the continued over-representation of children in robbery, carjacking and home-invasion cases.

The government should not use one slightly improved period to declare victory. The opposition and media should not use statewide totals to pretend every Melbourne suburb is equally dangerous or that crime can be explained by race alone.

Public scepticism is justified. But scepticism works only when it is applied to every side—including governments, police, media, political opponents and viral claims that happen to confirm what we already believe.