Victoria Police statistics reveal a complicated story of rising property offences and falling assaults in the Loddon Mallee region, and local services say the numbers are only part of it.
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Bendigo recorded 4,312 criminal incidents across the 2024-25 financial year, according to Victoria Police Crime Statistics Agency data, making it one of the busiest regional crime hubs in the state outside Greater Geelong. The figure represents a 6.3 per cent increase on the previous year, driven almost entirely by property crime, but a closer reading of the data complicates the easy headline.
The release of the annual crime statistics last month lands at a moment when Victorians are paying close attention to public safety. A Glasgow-based violence-reduction model is under active consideration by the state government in Melbourne, and community service providers across regional Victoria are watching to see whether any funding or program architecture filters outward to cities like Bendigo. The Loddon Mallee region, which stretches from Bendigo north to Mildura and east toward Echuca, has historically received a smaller share of state-level safety investment than metropolitan areas despite comparable per-capita crime rates.
On the ground in Bendigo, the picture is uneven. The suburb of Kangaroo Flat recorded the highest concentration of theft-from-motor-vehicle incidents in the local government area, 187 reports between January and June 2025, up from 143 in the same period in 2024. Hargreaves Street in the CBD remained the single most incident-dense corridor, accounting for roughly one in eight all public amenity complaints lodged with Bendigo Police Station on Williamson Street. The Bendigo Community Health Services outreach team, which operates from its Kangaroo Flat site on Helms Street, logged a 22 per cent increase in clients citing recent contact with the justice system in the 12 months to March 2026.
Drill into the categories and the story shifts. Aggravated burglary in Greater Bendigo dropped 14 per cent year-on-year, from 78 incidents to 67. Non-aggravated residential burglary fell 9 per cent. Family violence-related incidents, tracked separately by the Crime Statistics Agency, held roughly steady at 1,104 for the year, a number Loddon Mallee community legal services have described as stubbornly persistent despite a decade of targeted state investment. The Bendigo Magistrates' Court, on Cnr Lyttleton Terrace and Pall Mall, finalised 6,891 criminal cases in 2024-25, a workload that court administrators have flagged as straining current registry staffing levels.
Vehicle crime, rather than violence, explains almost all of the gross increase. Catalytic converter thefts, which the Crime Statistics Agency now tracks as a discrete subcategory following a national spike, contributed 94 incidents in the Bendigo local government area in 2025, nearly triple the 33 recorded in 2023. Goldfields Toyota and several mechanics along McIvor Road have anecdotally reported a surge in repair requests consistent with that trend. Police attributed some of the pressure to well-organised theft circuits travelling between regional centres, rather than purely local offending.
Victoria Police's Loddon Mallee Region has confirmed it will expand the Bendigo-based Local Government Partnerships program, a structured co-investment arrangement between the force and the City of Greater Bendigo, through the 2026-27 financial year, with a focus on lighting upgrades in the Hargreaves Mall precinct and camera coverage along View Street. The City of Greater Bendigo allocated $480,000 to public safety infrastructure in its May 2026 budget, a figure advocates at the Bendigo Neighbourhood House network described as a start but not sufficient to address underlying drivers.
Residents concerned about vehicle security can register with Greater Bendigo's free Operation Neighbourhood Watch network, which relaunched a digital alert system in February 2026. Loddon Mallee Legal Centre, operating out of offices on Mundy Street, offers free 30-minute consultations for people navigating infringement notices or minor criminal matters, appointments can be made directly via its website. The next quarterly crime statistics update from the Crime Statistics Agency is due in October 2026, and local advocates say they will be watching whether family violence numbers finally begin to reflect the scale of state and local investment in early intervention programs that has been building since 2022.
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Published by The Daily Bendigo
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