Murders have spiked in Australia's most populous state, driven by multiple-victim homicides including a shopping centre massacre in which six people were killed.
A total of 85 people were murdered in NSW in 2024, up from 56 in the previous year and the highest toll since 2014, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reports.
Joel Cauchi, 40, fatally stabbed his victims and injured 12 others at Westfield Bondi Junction in Sydney before a police officer shot him dead, in one of the nation's worst mass killings.
The crime bureau said there were eight multiple murders in 2024, resulting in 22 murder victims, compared to a decade average of two such events per year.
Some 63 incidents in 2024 were single victim murders, comparable with past years according to the agency.
The murder victims were 46 men, 26 women and 13 children, it said, adding almost half of murders related to domestic violence.
Aside from murder, the bureau said crimes in 12 of its 13 major offence categories were stable over the past 24 months.
"None of the 13 major crime categories increased in the two years to December 2024, while one, steal from motor vehicle, fell significantly," Ms Fitzgerald said.
For many offences the recent stable trend follows years of decline, she said. As a consequence, recorded incidents of robbery, break and enter, general stealing and malicious damage to property are all much lower than a decade ago.
Recorded incidents of domestic assault, non-domestic assault and sexual violence, however, have increased over the past decade.
The release comes after the crime statistics bureau in February found more young people were locked up in NSW jails as judges increasingly refused bail in line with a controversial legislative crackdown, aimed at curbing regional crime.
