Repeat offenders, teens fuel Victorian crime surge

Soaring car thefts, rising family violence and increases in retail and youth offences are fuelling record levels of crime in Victoria, despite law changes designed to put and keep more people behind bars.

Almost a quarter of a million Victorians became victims of crime in the year to September, an increase of 10.7 per cent for same period the previous year and a figure police described as sobering.

The overall crime rate rose by 9 per cent over the same period, according to the latest Crime Statistics Agency figures.

Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Bob Hill said repeat offenders in the state accounted for 25 per cent of its crime and those aged 12 to 17 remained a particular concern.

“That group drives some of the crime types that cause significant harm in the community,” he said.

The figures show more than 33,000 cars were stolen in the state for the year to September 30.

Police said one in four cars taken were now being stolen using key programming and mimicking technology, and much of this crime trend was being fuelled by youth offenders. The rate of car theft in Victoria is at its highest since 2002.

Police said officers had seized about 300 electronic devices. These included technology programmed to mimic keys that can be plugged into a vehicle’s on-board diagnostic port to override a security system and start the engine.

There were 640,860 crimes recorded in Victoria in the year to September, an increase of more than 10 per cent, or 62,671 more offences than in the previous year. The main driver of the increase was a rise in theft offences, which grew by more than 37,000 incidents.

Police said retail staff continued to deal with a crime every few minutes as the state grappled with a surge in aggression towards workers as well as other antisocial behaviour in shopping centres.

To deal with this, police and protective services officers have been deployed to four of Melbourne’s biggest shopping centres every day.

A police operation known as Pulse, which began on December 8, has so far led to 43 arrests in shopping centres, and officers have issued 14 penalty notices and seized eight weapons. More than a third of detected offences were for stealing from shops.

Victoria has registered its highest family violence rate since 2016, at 105,379 annual recorded incidents.

Family violence order breaches are on the rise. In the year, 63,664 incidents were reported, an increase of more than 8 per cent on the previous reporting period, making it the fourth-fastest-growing type of offence in the state.

Police intelligence shows most of these breaches related to offenders using technology including mobile phones and social media to target victims, particularly former partners.

Child offenders aged between 12 and 17 continue to fuel the state’s crime increase, and police arrested the same 1176 offenders an average of six times each, totalling 7075 arrests.

In the year to September, officers arrested 3100 youth gang members, underage burglars and young car thieves, as part of specialised operations targeting child crime and car thefts.

Home invasions also remain a major concern for police. There were 7892 aggravated home burglaries reported, an increase of 973 offences, or a 14 per cent rise.

Operation Trinity, a taskforce targeting youth-driven aggravated burglaries, arrested 627 young offenders a total of 1550 times.

The figures released on Thursday did not include any new data on knife crime, but Crime Statistics Agency data released last month showed incidents involving machetes more than tripled between 2021 and last year, climbing from 610 incidents to 2061. Young males were responsible for two in five of these incidents.

Police said officers had seized more than 16,000 edged weapons this year, equivalent to about 47 knives a day, exceeding the previous record of 14,808 knives seized last year.

Hill said police remained determined to reduce crime levels in Victoria, and the most “sobering statistic” was in relation to the high number of victims.

“The most concerning issue for me … is the 235,000-plus victims that have been impacted by crime,” he said.

“I don’t want to be standing here in six or 12 months’ time talking about this number of victims.

“I want to see those numbers decline, and decline as quickly as we can possibly deliver.

“Far too many innocent people are being impacted by crime, with many suffering from ongoing physical, psychological or financial issues.”

The state government tightened bail laws in March, focusing on youth offenders and children.

Hill said there were early indications that bail remand applications and the number of those being remanded had increased.

“There is some stabilisation occurring,” he said. “There are some weak signals that would indicate some of our interventions are starting to have an impact, but it will take some time.”

Police arrested 213 people a day on average during the year, for a total of 77,911 arrests.

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