Commissioner Designate Ian Stewart, Police Minister Jack Dempsey and Commissioner Bob Atkinson discuss the release of the 2012 Annual Statistical Review today, and crime trends shown by the figures

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October 24, 2012

Crime increased by an average of 6 per cent across Queensland last financial year, but fell by 1 per cent in the North Coast Region, which includes the South Burnett, according to the Queensland Police Service’s 2011-2012 Annual Statistical Review.

The figures, which were released this morning, show that Queensland’s two worst areas for crime last year were the Gold Coast and the Far Northern Region. Both saw an 11 per cent increase in overall crime.

But the North Coast region – which covers the area from Redcliffe through to Bundaberg, and west to the South Burnett – saw crime decline 1 per cent during the same period.

Retiring Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said today the latest figures were a surprising result.

“This is the first time in… over a decade, perhaps 12 years, where we seen a jump and a spike like this,” he said.

However, since crime had decreased by 17 per cent over the past decade, he thought they were more likely to be a “blip” than a trend.

Commissioner Atkinson also noted a “disturbing trend” in the figures, which was that some homes seemed to be getting burgled so that thieves could steal car keys.

He thought this was because it was now “almost impossible” to hot-wire cars, and urged home-owners to hide any spare sets of car keys they kept at home.

Incoming Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said he was already planning how to turn the figures around by “targeting recidivist offenders, having more police out there on the front-line, and using intelligence-based information to target hot-spots.”

On average, assaults rose by 6 per cent across the State last financial year, property crime by 7 per cent and armed robbery by 13 per cent.

But statistics for murder, sexual assault and fraud were all down.

The North Coast region saw a smaller increase in assaults (3 per cent), a 7 per cent increase in drug offences and an 11 per cent increase in Weapons Act offences.

But fraud offences decreased 45 per cent, rape and attempted rape dropped 14 per cent and traffic offences dropped 5 per cent.

The North Coast Region crime figures for 2011-2012 are shown in the table below:


* Shows number of offences per 100,000 people