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A Tale of Two Cities

The Hidden Geography of Police Powers in Victoria

A study of designated areas 2019 - 2024

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The Power to Search

In Victoria, police possess a sweeping search power, one that allows police to bypass civil liberties and legal protections: Designated Areas. Control of Weapons Act 1990 sets out these powers.

Inside these zones, police do not need search warrants, or even "reasonable suspicion" that you have done something wrong to search you. They can stop and search you simply for being there.

These powers are discretionary, meaning police can choose where and when to deploy them. Police must declare Designated Areas via the Government Gazette or the Victoria Police website.

The police say these powers are for public safety—specifically to stop violent crime. But does the deployment of these powers actually match the crime? and which communities are subjected to Designated Areas the most?

We looked at all the Designated Areas declared in the Government Gazette from 2019-2024. We also looked at the relevant crime ratesFocused specifically on offences that legally justify 'Designated Area' powers: weapons possession, robbery, and assault. Data from CSA Victoria., and who lives in these communities. The data says that police don't follow the crime, they follow the communities that live there.

We looked at LGAs and compared them to each other.

Scroll down to explore the findings.

Violent Crime Rate

Follow the Crime

If policing followed crimeCrime data used is aggregated offences from 2019-2024, concentrating on weapons possession, robbery, and assault. All data used from Crime Stats Agency., you would expect the area with a higher crime rate to be policed more intensely. Let's compare Greater Dandenong and Yarra.

The Paradox

Yarra has a significantly higher crime rate, yet receives zero discretionary policing.Designated Areas are discretionary powers that the chief commissioner of police can invoke under certain conditions. Greater Dandenong, with less crime, is one of the most intensely policedPolice intensity score = The sum of all hours an LGA lived under warrantless search powers over the 5-year study period, adjusted per capita. areas in the state.

An Identical Crime Rate

The pattern repeats even when crime rates are almost identical. Let's compare Brimbank and Darebin.

The Disparity Repeats

But Brimbank is policed 8.6x more intensely than Darebin.

Crime can't explain this. What can?

% Racialised Population

The Reveal

The difference isn't crime. It's demographics.

Yarra is 16% RacialisedRacialised percentages are calculated using 2021 ABS Census ancestry data (non-European proxy). This serves as a metric for the demographic conditions that trigger police attention. . Greater Dandenong is 62% Racialised.

The Pattern Confirmed

Brimbank is 47% Racialised. Darebin is 20% Racialised.

As racial diversity increases, so does policing intensity.

Demographics Drive Policing

This is no coincidence. The more racialised a community, the more it is subject to designated area policing.

Policing Intensity vs Demographics

The Big Picture

This isn't an anomaly. When we map 33 major LGA in Victoria, the pattern becomes undeniable.

Policing doesn't follow the crime

When we map designated area policing (Y-Axis) against Crime Rates (X-Axis), there seems to be little connection

Racialisation is linked to designated areas

But when we map policing against % racialised population, a clear line emerges. As diversity increases, policing spikes.

Quartile Disparity: 1.83x

Quantifying the Disparity

In fact, when we compare the top 25% most racialised LGAs with the bottom 25% least racialised LGAs, we see that the top quartile is policed almost twice more intensely (1.83x more intensely).

Zooming into the Extremes

When we zoom into the extremes, the pattern is even starker. The top 10% of racialised LGAs are policed 3.56x more intensely than the bottom 10%.

The Mechanism: Strategic "Hub Policing"

The data suggests that the deployment of search powers is not random, but tied to a strategy of Hub PolicingThe concentration of police resources and warrantless search powers at transport interchanges and shopping precincts.. By gazetting the essential infrastructure of daily life—train stations and transit hubs—the state creates "enclaves of surveillance" within specific postcodes.

The study reveals a critical paradox: while high-traffic hubs in affluent, white-majority LGAs operate under standard legal protections, identical hubs in highly racialisedAreas with a high percentage of non-European ancestry according to 2021 ABS Census data. communities are frequently subjected to "Designated Area" declarations.

This operational choice results in a geography of suspended rights, where a citizen's protection against warrantless search depends less on their behavior and more on the demographic makeup of the station they use to get to work.

Compounding Disparities

1. Structural Exposure

3.56x

Highly racialised communities are subjected to Designated Area powers over 3.5 times more intensely than white-majority LGAs.

2. Racial Profiling

15x

Data from the RPDMPThe Racial Profiling Data Monitoring Project, which tracks search outcomes and police discretion across Victoria. shows that even for standard searches, certain communities are searched up to 15 times more often than white residents.

3. Systemically ineffective

99%

Victoria Police’s own dataLiberty Victoria's Right Advocacy Project report of searches outlines this data. See full report here reveals that 99% of searches conducted under these powers find no weapons, subjecting thousands to rights violations for zero public safety gain See Rights Advocacy Report here.

The evidence reveals a "self-fulfilling feedback loop." By concentrating an ineffective tool in diverse hubs, police find minor offences that are then used as data to justify the next declaration.

In Victoria, the right to move freely without warrantless surveillance has become a privilege based on postcode, affluence and racialisation.

READ THE FULL 2019-2024 REPORT

About This Research

This study was conducted by Ilo Diaz at the Centre Against Racial Profiling.

It analysed all Designated Area declarations in Victoria from 2019-2024 using data from the Victorian Government Gazette, ABS Census, and Crime Statistics Agency Victoria.

For more about our work: centreagainstracialprofiling.au

Contact: ilodiaz@outlook.com

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