How your suburb stacks up in the latest Victorian assault figures

Serious assaults are rife in Melbourne’s CBD but some of Victoria’s prime postcodes are also hotspots for violent crime. See the most dangerous suburbs.

Assaults data across Victoria, has been mapped.

Eye-opening crime data shows the biggest hot spots for violence across our suburbs.

The most dangerous suburb for serious assaults outside of Melbourne’s CBD is Dandenong, in the state’s southeast.

St Kilda, despite its eye-watering real estate prices, is one of the state’s most violent suburbs, recording 124 serious assaults.

Criminologist Nicole Ryan, of the La Trobe University law school, said areas with strong night-life cultures tended to see a higher number of violent assaults.

The figures, from the Crime Statistics Agency, do not include family violence.

“Areas with nightclubs, restaurants and other late-night entertainment which attract visitors are the kinds of places we would expect to see more assaults,” Dr Ryan said.

“Alcohol consumption, high volumes of people and even greater police presence in those areas detecting the crimes need to be taken into consideration.”

Opposition police spokesman Brad Battin said there were more than 800 police vacancies in Victoria.

He urged the government not to close police stations even in the face of staffing shortages, especially in regional areas.

Dr Ryan said better design of nightclubs, streetscapes and transport options could make a positive difference to the serious assault statistics.

“We know that people are more inclined to be violent at night, when they’ve been drinking,” she said.

“If they have to line up to get into nightclubs, if there is a designated space for them to wait, rather than having foot traffic coming through causing people to bump into each other, can make a difference.

“If you have all the venues closing at the same time and everybody coming out on the street at once, all trying to find transport, that can be problematic.

“Even inside the nightclubs, where you have the bar relative to the dance floor can make a difference, if people have to cross it with drinks in hand.”

A Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into strategies to reduce assaults in public places in Victoria in 2010, found that Dandenong, Frankston and Ballarat along with the Melbourne CBD, St Kilda and Prahran had high numbers of assaults in public places.

The new figures for Ballarat show a marked improvement, with the number of serious assaults at 48, far less than Bendigo’s 63 for the same period.

However, the figures for St Kilda, Frankston and Dandenong remained stubbornly high.

The inquiry found at the time there had been a 30 per cent rise in assaults in the Dandenong local government area between 2007 – 2009.

Many attacks occurred near train stations where underage people were congregating to drink and in Frankston, a similar problem was happening in the local McDonalds’ car park.