The Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) has today released its recorded crime statistics for Victoria for the year ending 30 September 2017. For the first time this release includes a new measure, recorded criminal incidents, that better reflects the number of criminal events committed in Victoria.
Recorded criminal incidents statistics show that there were 391,153 incidents recorded by Victoria Police in the year to September 2017, down by 4.8% compared to the same period last year. This equated to a criminal incident rate of 6,352.4 per 100,000 of the population, down 6.2% from the previous year. A large proportion of this decrease is attributed to incidents with a property and deception principal offence, which were down 8.8% and comprised 62.3% of all recorded crimes in Victoria in the last 12 months.
Recorded offences also showed a decrease, down 4.9% compared to the same period last year, a total of 517,118 offences. This equated to an offence rate of 8,398.1 per 100,000 of the population, down 6.3% from the previous year.
Offender incidents increased by 4.0% to 176,987 offender incidents in the year ending September 2017, making the Victorian offender rate 2,873.3 offender incidents per 100,000 population.
The victimisation rate decreased by 8.6% compared to the same period last year, making the rate 5,013.0 per 100,000 population in the year to September 2017.
Family related incidents decreased to 75,374, down by 4.4% compared to the same time last year.
Crime Statistics Agency Chief Statistician Fiona Dowsley said that ‘the new incident based measure represents a significant addition to how crime is reported and provides the community with more relevant and accurate information on crime in Victoria.’
‘In the last 12 months both recorded criminal incidents and recorded offences decreased by almost 5%, compared to the previous year in Victoria’ Ms Dowsley said.
Further information can be found in the latest crime statistics quarterly release, available from the CSA website:
http://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/latest-crime-data/ (External link)
For further information please contact:
Crime Statistics Agency
Phone: 8684 1808
Email: info@crimestatistics.vic.gov.au (External link)