Is it just me, but every city at and below the 100 mark are world renowned for their criminal histories, and all the cities above it are not.
Just like New York's South Bronx doesn't surround the city. The bad suburbs don't surround Paris.
You do realise that Australia was originally founded as a penal colony. And that about 50% of the First Fleet (thus 50% of the entire colony/city) were convicts. Wiki tells me that about 165,000 convicts were sent here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia
Every city on the list has a prison. Not many of them were originally intended to be a prison.