How Bendigo's crime problem got to this point: a decade of drift and delayed decisions

Bendigo's Loddon Mallee police region recorded a 14 per cent rise in property crime between 2022 and 2024, according to Crime Statistics Agency Victoria data — a figure that sits well above the state average and one that Greater Bendigo councillors have repeatedly raised at ordinary meetings without arriving at a coordinated response. That gap between the numbers and the action is where the city finds itself today.

The context matters right now because Victoria is actively considering importing the Glasgow Violence Reduction Unit model, a public-health approach to crime that turned Scotland's most dangerous city into one of its safest over roughly 15 years. Whether a similar framework lands in regional centres like Bendigo, or stays a Melbourne conversation, will depend largely on whether local governments can demonstrate they have the data and the community partnerships to absorb it. Bendigo does not yet have either in a coherent form.

How the gaps opened up

The trajectory goes back to 2015, when Victoria Police restructured its regional command arrangements and Bendigo lost a dedicated crime prevention unit that had operated out of the Hargreaves Street station. The unit had run diversion programs in partnership with Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services and the Bendigo and District Aboriginal Cooperative — two organisations that remain central to any credible community safety conversation in the city. Without the unit, those partnerships became informal and underfunded.

Population growth accelerated the pressure. Greater Bendigo's estimated resident population crossed 120,000 in 2022, up from roughly 100,000 a decade earlier, driven in part by the post-pandemic regional migration wave. Infrastructure spending followed — the $630 million Bendigo Health redevelopment on Lucan Street added hundreds of jobs — but the corresponding investment in social services and community safety did not scale at the same rate. The Kangaroo Flat and Eaglehawk suburbs, both of which sit outside the retail and arts precinct that defines central Bendigo's identity, absorbed a disproportionate share of the new population without matching increases in youth services or after-hours community programs.

Magistrates Court data from 2023-24 shows the Bendigo court processed 4,217 criminal matters during that financial year, a 9 per cent increase on the previous year. Theft, burglary and motor vehicle theft account for the majority of the caseload. Family violence matters, which the court handles through a dedicated list, rose 11 per cent in the same period — a trend the Bendigo Magistrates Court coordinator flagged publicly at a February 2025 stakeholders forum at the Capital Theatre venue on View Street.

The programs that exist and what they're missing

It would be wrong to say nothing has been done. The Bendigo Safe City CCTV network was expanded in 2021, adding 34 cameras to the central business district and the Hargreaves Mall precinct. Victoria Police launched the Loddon Mallee Youth Crime Action Plan in mid-2023, targeting repeat young offenders in the 10-to-17 age cohort. The Bendigo Community Health Services on Daly Street has run a Navigator program — a state government initiative pairing at-risk youth with caseworkers — since 2019.

But Navigator operates with a caseload cap and a waiting list that, as of March 2026, stood at 23 young people in the Bendigo catchment area alone. The CCTV network monitors but does not intervene. And the Youth Crime Action Plan, by the Police's own mid-program review, was under-resourced at the local implementation level.

What happens next will hinge on two things. The state government is expected to announce regional allocations under its Community Safety Statement update before the end of 2026, and Greater Bendigo Council is scheduled to finalise its Community Wellbeing Plan — the document that should anchor any local crime prevention framework — by October. Residents who want to shape that plan can still make submissions through the council's online portal, with the community consultation period running until July 25. The practical window to push for the kind of structural investment that would make a genuine difference is narrow, and it is open right now.