Gang crime including street robberies continues to be a problem in Victoria, police admit

Gang crime including car-jackings, assaults, street robberies and drug use have all increased.

Police attend an attempted armed robbery at a bottle shop in Melbourne's east.

Gang crime including car-jackings, assaults, street robberies and drug use and possession have all increased over the past 12 months in Victoria, as firearm offence hit a 10-year high, according to the latest crime statistics.

Victoria’s crime statistics agency today reported that overall offences had risen by 2.6 per cent to 515,682 in the 12 months to March 31.

However, when population growth is taken into account, today’s statistics reflect the lowest criminal incident rate since March 2015.

Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said police were seeing people committing crimes in groups.

“In terms of robberies, often we’re seeing cowardly attacks by people who are in groups of three or four and it’s those street robberies where they’re demanding phones and everything like that, so that’s a concern for us.”

The new data shows victim numbers have decreased while the number of offenders “processed” has increased.

Police Minister Lisa Neville conceded it was the first time in the state’s history of collecting crime statistics that the number of offenders had outstripped the number of victims, but said there had been a decrease in “high-harm” crime such as aggravated burglaries and home invasions.

Victoria’s crime statistics agency says that overall offences in the state have risen by 2.6 per cent to 515,682 in the 12 months to March 31. Picture: Jason Edwards

Ms Neville attributed an increase in youth crime to a small group of repeat offenders.

“We continue to see some high-harm crimes by some of those youth offenders, so we continue to have a smaller but serious group of youth offenders,” she said.

Family violence was up by 8.0 per cent, from 75,257 to 81,252, with police attending an incident every six minutes, but police attributed this to an increase in reporting.

“That’s an amazing amount … (and) an increase of about 6000 on the last period,” Mr Patton said.

He said he expected the number of family violence crimes, including sexual assault, to continue to rise as the force rolls out it specialised team of officers to target the problem.

Assaults, drug use and possession as well as weapons and explosives offences all rose in the past 12 months.

Firearm offences hit 34 incidents per 100,000 — almost double the rate ten years ago.

Burglaries and break-and-enters dropped 13.5 per cent from 45,128 to 39,019.

“There’s always further work you have to do and these crime statistics show that,” Premier Daniel Andrews said.

Opposition police spokesman David Southwick said Labor was overseeing a crime increase.

“Today’s … report shows the over-representation of 15- to 19-year-olds in violent crime is the single greatest social problem facing Victoria,” he said.

“Victoria is at risk of having an intergenerational crime issue.”

There has also been an increase in the number of girls committing youth crime, with the rate reaching 26 per cent in the 12 months to March 2019, compared with 21 per cent in 2014-15.

— With AAP