The Worst Suburbs in Canberra for Living: 2026 Guide

The suburb that tops every “worst suburbs in Canberra” list recorded seven residential burglaries in a year.

Seven, out of 2,124 offences. City, better known as Civic, is a commercial precinct with a nightlife strip, and almost nothing in its total happens to anyone who lives there.

That is the flaw running through every Canberra ranking, including the version of this page we published before. This one uses ACT Policing’s own quarterly data for the year to March 2026 and labels every number for what it is.

For the other side of the picture see the safest suburbs in Canberra. We are removalists Melbourne and we run the Canberra corridor regularly.

Updated 4 August 2026. Source: ACT Policing quarterly suburb data, four quarters summed to give the year to March 2026, compared with the four quarters a year earlier. Traffic and criminal infringement notices are excluded. Year-on-year percentages are our own calculation.

Worst suburbs in Canberra by recorded offences

Every figure below is a raw count of recorded offences. It is not a crime rate and it is not adjusted for population.

ACT Policing releases suburb data quarterly, so the year here is four published quarters added together. That smooths seasonality but it will not match any single quarterly headline.

These are raw counts of recorded offences, not crime rates. ACT Policing does not publish a per population rate at suburb level. Suburbs with large shopping, nightlife or industrial precincts record high counts because of who visits, not who lives there.

Source: ACT Policing quarterly suburb data, summing April to June 2025, July to September 2025, October to December 2025 and January to March 2026. Figures will not match any single ACT Policing quarterly headline.

Belconnen recorded 1,817 offences, up from 1,541. In raw numbers that is the biggest rise of any Canberra suburb, 276 more offences, though Phillip rose faster in percentage terms at 20.7 per cent.

Three of the top ten fell. Fyshwick dropped 6.4 per cent, the largest proportional fall in the group, with Gungahlin and Kambah both down 2.1 per cent.

One category caveat worth knowing. “Other offences” is a large residual bucket in the ACT classification and it is inside every total shown here.

For the national frame see our data on the crime rate in Australia, and for the same exercise done on a much bigger city, the worst suburbs in Sydney.

Counts, not rates: what ACT Policing actually publishes

This is the single most important thing to understand before reading any Canberra crime ranking.

ACT Policing publishes offence counts by suburb. It does not publish a rate per 100,000 or per 1,000 at suburb level, in any release, in any format.

Rows three and four describe pages currently ranking for this query, and the fourth describes the previous version of this page. We removed the crowd sourced index and replaced it with ACT Policing counts.

There is a second, quieter trap. ACT Policing suburb names and ABS statistical areas are not the same geography, so combining a police count with an ABS population produces an approximation, never an official rate.

Where the data lives is worth knowing too. The quarterly suburb spreadsheet is no longer linked from the ACT Policing website, and the copy on the ACT open data portal is roughly a year out of date.

Current suburb figures come from the data feed behind the Crime Statistics Map, which is where the numbers in this article were taken from. ACT Policing’s own site notes a technical issue with that map.

We apply the same rule to quotes as to crime data: if the number has no method attached, it is not a number. Our guide to choosing a removalist covers what to ask, and the Melbourne version of this analysis shows the same pattern in Victoria.

Canberra crime against the Territory trend

A suburb going up means very little on its own. What matters is whether it moved faster or slower than the Territory.

Recorded offences across the ACT rose 5.9 per cent in the year to March 2026, from 25,471 to 26,976, excluding traffic infringement notices. Here is the top ten measured against that.

Territory figure from the ACT Policing monthly workbook, year to March 2026, excluding traffic infringement notices. Suburb figures from the quarterly suburb data. Not one competing Canberra ranking publishes a year on year direction for any suburb.

Read that column rather than the ranking. Braddon and Wanniassa appear on worst suburb lists and both rose more slowly than Canberra as a whole.

Phillip and Belconnen are the two genuinely moving, and both are town centres rather than residential neighbourhoods, which is the subject of the section below.

The April to June 2026 quarter has not been published yet. When it lands, every figure here should be re checked before it is quoted anywhere.

Compare against our national numbers on the cost of living in Australia, which drives far more Canberra moves than crime does, and work the logistics with our moving house checklist.

The Canberra suburbs moving fastest

The steepest rises in Canberra are not in the top ten at all. They are in mid sized suburbs that no ranking page mentions.

Among suburbs with more than 100 offences a year, Bruce rose fastest, from 245 to 390, up 59.2 per cent. Ainslie is next, from 234 to 371, up 58.5 per cent.

Same source and periods. Bruce and Ainslie are the fastest risers among suburbs recording more than 100 offences a year. Whitlam, Spence and Farrer rose faster in percentage terms but from much smaller bases, where a handful of extra incidents moves the percentage a long way.

Bruce and Ainslie are worth taking seriously because they are not a single quarter spike. Every one of the four current quarters sits above its year earlier counterpart.

Bruce ran 50, 59, 63 and 73 in the earlier year, then 95, 82, 131 and 82. Ainslie ran 46, 58, 64 and 66, then 97, 70, 107 and 97.

That is a sustained shift, not noise. Neither suburb appears on a single competing worst suburbs list, which is the clearest evidence that those lists are not being recalculated.

None of this is a reason to rule a suburb out. Our moving house tips and our removalist cost guide deal with the questions that actually decide a move.

Canberra’s town centres are not suburbs

Here is the correction that the whole article exists for, and the data makes it in one column.

Residential burglary is the closest thing in the file to a measure of risk to people who live somewhere. Compare it against the totals.

Offence breakdowns from the same ACT Policing quarterly data. Kambah population from ABS 2021 Census QuickStats for the suburb boundary, now five years old. Blank cells were not part of the published breakdown for that suburb.

Seven residential burglaries in Civic across a full year, against 2,124 offences. Three in Fyshwick. Those are the numbers that describe what a resident actually experiences.

Kambah is the contrast that makes the point. It is a genuinely residential suburb of 15,670 people, its profile is theft at 90 and family and domestic violence assaults at 41, and it sits eighth while falling 2.1 per cent.

Ranking Civic above Kambah as a place to live is not a close call that reasonable people disagree on. It is a category error, produced by counting offences where they happen rather than asking who they happen to.

The practical consequence for a move is different from what the lists imply. In a town centre the questions are lift access, loading zones and security doors, which is what our notes on apartment moves and storage costs cover.

Flood and bushfire in Canberra: no suburb ranking exists

You will find pages ranking Canberra suburbs by flood or bushfire exposure. None of them can be sourced, because the ACT does not publish such a ranking.

The ACT Emergency Services Agency and the ACT Government both decline to name flood prone suburbs. They direct residents to search an individual address on ACTmapi, the Territory’s mapping portal.

Flood modelling in the ACT is done at the level of an individual parcel of land. A 1 per cent annual exceedance probability extent crosses suburb boundaries and includes water surfaces, so converting it into a suburb percentage produces a figure that describes nothing.

We tried the conversion ourselves and threw the result away. Overlaying the official flood extent on suburb boundaries picks up part of the Lake Burley Griffin surface, which inflates every lakeside suburb.

That is exactly the kind of number that ends up on a ranking page with no method attached. The honest answer is that the suburb is the wrong unit for this question.

The same goes for apartment share, which several Canberra pages quote as though it were current. The most recent published Census is 2021, the 2026 count runs in August 2026, and its results are not due until 2027.

Search the address before you sign anything, then deal with the practical side. Our guide to preparing for a move and the volume calculator handle the parts we can actually measure.

Frequently asked questions about the worst suburbs in Canberra

The questions we get most when someone rings about a Canberra move. See also the safest suburbs in Sydney for a contrast, and our change of address checklist for the admin.

What is the worst suburb in Canberra for crime?

On recorded offences, City, or Civic, leads with 2,124 in the year to March 2026, then Belconnen on 1,817. These are counts, not rates. ACT Policing publishes no per population crime rate at suburb level.

Why does Civic top the list if it is safe to live in?

Because the count records offences where they happen, not who they happen to. Civic recorded 688 thefts and 7 residential burglaries in a full year. It is a commercial and nightlife precinct rather than a residential suburb.

Is crime in Canberra getting worse?

Territory wide, yes. Recorded offences excluding traffic infringement notices rose 5.9 per cent in the year to March 2026, from 25,471 to 26,976. But Gungahlin, Kambah and Fyshwick all fell over the same period.

Which Canberra suburbs are rising fastest?

Among suburbs recording more than 100 offences a year, Bruce rose 59.2 per cent and Ainslie 58.5 per cent. Both rises are sustained across all four quarters. Whitlam more than doubled but from a very small base.

Are the per 1,000 crime rates you see for Canberra suburbs reliable?

No official source supports them. ACT Policing publishes suburb counts with no population denominator, so a per 1,000 suburb rate cannot be derived from any release. Treat any page quoting one without naming a source with caution.

Which Canberra suburbs flood?

No agency publishes a suburb ranking or a property count for flood in the ACT. Flood risk is assessed for individual parcels of land, so the only reliable check is searching a specific address on ACTmapi.

How current is this data?

It covers the year to March 2026, built from the four quarters ACT Policing has published to date. The April to June 2026 quarter is not out yet, so recheck any figure here once it lands.

Found your Canberra suburb? Let’s get you moved

Canberra’s worst suburb lists mostly rank shopping centres, a nightlife strip and an industrial estate, using rates that no ACT agency has ever published.

The counts are real and worth reading. Just read them for what they are, check the direction as well as the number, and check flood and bushfire against the address rather than the suburb name.

Once you have picked a street, get a free moving quote and hold the price while you sort the rest of the move.

We move households across Victoria and along the inland corridor, and if your dates do not line up we can bridge the gap with storage between homes.