‘Out of control’: Latrobe Valley crime rates force locals to leave

It’s the most dangerous postcode outside of the CBD, where many locals don’t venture outside their doors at night. And this town is just two hours from Melbourne.

Morwell has the highest crime rates in the state outside of metro Melbourne. The quiet, pretty streets hide the dark side of living in the town which locals describe as "frightening" and "out of control".

Two hours from Melbourne, in the southeastern corner of the state, sits the crime capital of regional Victoria.

Driving through you’d be forgiven for thinking the Latrobe Valley was nothing more than a series of quiet communities surrounded by picturesque hills but take a minute to talk to locals and a different story is told.

The crime rate almost doubles the state’s average, with criminals causing damage across the towns through family violence, thefts and common assaults.

Morwell sits at the centre of the Latrobe Valley and as you walk through the sleepy main street there are nods to the town’s skyrocketing crime rates — a giant mural promoting nonviolence takes pride of place and legal services are on every shopping strip.

Outside of the Melbourne CBD, it has the worst crime rates in Victoria.

A mural in Morwell promotes a safer Victoria.

Crime rose by almost 16 per cent between March 2022 and March 2023, according to the latest data from Crime Statistics Victoria, and it’s noticed by the locals.

One elderly resident, to scared to give her name, no longer feels safe walking her dog and avoids certain places all together after being attacked by a group of youths at the Mid Valley Shopping Centre.

An elderly woman has been left too terrified to walk her dog after she was attacked by a group of youths outside the Mid Valley Shopping Centre

“A group of kids came up to me and tried to grab my bag off of me,” she says.

“There’s all these kids that should be in school hanging around, they ride their bikes and they go after the vulnerable people, like me.”

It is “frightening”, she says, that she no longer feels safe even in her own home and has friends who have moved to retirement homes in order to feel safer.

“I have been here for 15 years and I am going to move away,” she says.

“It shouldn’t be this way for us older people, we have a right to feel safe in our homes we have worked our whole lives for.”

She believes the law needs to be harsher on offenders in order to bring crime down.

“The police catch them then they get let off with a tap on the knuckles from the court,” she says.

“It’s out of control.”

The quiet, pretty streets hide the dark side of living in the town which locals describe as "frightening" and "out of control".

Ian Lowe has lived in Morwell for 40 years but sees more “riff raff” around nowadays.

“I don’t go out at night anymore,” he says.

“There is just so much swearing and bad behaviour, you can see it when you’re walking around at any time of the day.

“There is just no respect anymore.”

But it’s not just longtime residents who are noticing the change.

Trevor Harris said he doesn’t go out at night.

Trevor Harris is relatively new to the town, moving there just five years ago.

Like Ian, he doesn’t go out at night to try to “keep himself out of harm’s way” as he’s noticed there’s “lots going on”.

But police say despite the high crime rate, they are seeing improvement.

While the number of crimes has gone up since 2022, they’re lower than prepandemic levels, investigation and response manager Inspector Leigh Balthazaar says.

“(But) we continue to focus on doing everything we can to deter crime and keep the community safe,” she says.

It looks quiet but the Morwell Police Station is a hive of activity.

They’re trying to reduce crime rates by “targeting and deterring criminals looking to break into cars” and focusing on homes.

In the past six months alone, police have arrested more than 130 people in relation to break ins in the Latrobe Valley, Inspector Balthazaar says.

While Morwell is the epicentre, nearby Traralgon and Moe aren’t much better.

Newborough and Churchill round out the top five most unsafe places in the Valley.

Family violence is an issue that plagues the area, with services struggling to keep up with demand for resources.

Millions of dollars have been invested in reducing the rates of family violence in Victoria since the Royal Commission into family violence but it remains a problem for the region.

There are plenty of support services in place — The Orange Door, case management support, flexible funding to support victim survivors, refuge services, women and children’s counselling programs, programs for people who use violence, Aboriginal Family Violence services, adolescent family violence program and sexual assault support services — to name a few, but the issue just keeps happening.

In Morwell, despite police doing the best they can, locals have been left with few options to battle the crime.

Stay indoors or leave.