Criminal Offending Reaches 20-Year High in Queensland

The number of criminal offences in Queensland has reached a record high in the past two decades, as the state saw a significant increase in severe forms of crime in 2023. New data from Queensland police indicated that there were a total of 603,321 criminal offences in 2023, or over 50,000 incidents a month. This figure represented a 7.3 percent increase compared to the previous year and was much higher than the average rate of below 500,000 since 2001. Serious forms of offences such as assaults, sexual harassment, robbery, arson, unlawful entry, and stolen vehicles all rose during the year. Specifically, there were 20,211 cases of unlawful use of a vehicle and 147,074 incidents of unlawful entry, causing both categories to reach their highest record since the pre-2001 period....