New crime statistics also show a spike in retail theft across the Illawarra, with Detective Chief Inspector Brad Ainsworth saying police were working with store managers to detect, prevent and respond to robberies.

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research's latest quarterly data shows the Illawarra is on trend with the rest of the state where retail theft has also increased.

In the Illawarra, which includes Wollongong, Shellharbour and Kiama, the only major increases in crime incidents when compared to 2018 data was stealing from retail stores, which had 255 more offences, and 193 more fraud incidents.

That is a 23.5 per cent increase and a 14.4 per cent increase respectively, over the past 24 months.

Across the state, half of the increase in retail robberies was due to theft from licensed premises.

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Alcohol was the most commonly stolen item, which was taken in a third of incidents.

Detective Chief Inspector Ainsworth said a proactive team of loss prevention officers had carried out a number of successful operations in the last 12 months and as a result the legal action rate had increased.

"By working in the proactive space we are detecting and responding to more offences," he said.

"A large number of our fraud offences are coming from people leaving valuables inside vehicles and not locking them.

"We see a lot of paywave crime as a result of this. We encourage the community to lock their vehicles and always remove valuables."

In the Illawarra, the most commonly committed major crime was malicious damage to property with 2189 incidents in the past year to September.

This was followed by 1716 thefts from motor vehicles, 1531 frauds, then 1338 thefts from retail stores.

Other major crimes statistics included 951 domestic violence related assaults, 936 non-domestic assaults and 921 break and enters.

There was 294 indecent assaults and 225 sexual assaults. There were also three robberies with a firearm and five murders.