Last year, we made several maps of crime in Victoria based on the 79 local government area boundaries. At the time these were the smallest geographical boundaries for which we could obtain crime data.

However, Victoria Police recently released data that zooms in even further. We can now see how many crimes were recorded in each of the state’s 692 postcodes from 2007/8 to 2011/12.

We couldn’t resist turning it into a map:

The map shows at a glance that inner-city areas have the highest crime rates, and that as you move further out there are pockets of high crime in the western and south-eastern suburbs.

Melbourne City (postcodes 3000 and 3004) has the highest crime rate, followed by inner-city areas Fitzroy, Collingwood and South Melbourne. However, the crime rate in all of these areas has declined in the past few years.

A police spokeswoman said the city’s high crime rate was due to its high visitor population throughout the year and because of its busy shopping and entertainment districts, which were a magnet for alcohol and drug related assaults.

Here is the data on crimes recorded in all Victoria’s postcodes over the past five financial years. The crime data is from Victoria Police, while the population figures were taken from the 2011 census.

You can also download the data.

For the story we excluded postcodes with fewer than 1000 residents, as in these areas a handful of extra crimes can completely transform the crime rate. If we hadn’t filtered the data this way, Melbourne would have lost its status as the postcode with the highest crime rate to Somerton, in Melbourne’s west.