Huge spike in family violence orders pushes up crime rate

By Max Stainkamph

Sep 30, 2021

Criminal incident rates have spiked by nearly 10 per cent in Shepparton over the past 12 months, fuelled largely by breaches of family violence and intervention orders, public health and safety offences and sexual offences.

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However, burglaries and theft have dropped by about a third in Greater Shepparton.

The figures from the Crime Statistics Agency’s quarterly report, which was released on Thursday, cover crimes recorded by police from July 2020 to June 2021.

More than 2200 family violence orders were breached in Greater Shepparton, accounting for nearly a quarter of the 9672 incidents recorded in the 12 months to June 2021.

That figure — 2226 — was up on the 1405 breaches of family violence orders recorded in the previous 12 months from July 2019 to June 2020.

There were 558 recorded sexual offences committed in Greater Shepparton, up from 190 in the previous reporting period.

Police recorded 177 breaches of public health and safety offences.

However, rates of theft and burglary plummeted. Residential non-aggravated burglaries — thefts without aggravating factors such as weapons or violence — dropped by 32 per cent, from 381 to 258, while aggravated burglaries dropped by more than 15 per cent.

Theft of motor vehicles and from motor vehicles dropped by 20 per cent, with 224 and 571 instances respectively, while 108 instances of bicycle theft were recorded.

Some 422 instances of drug possession were recorded by police, an increase of 43 on the previous 12 months, but cases of being drunk and disorderly in public dropped by a third, with large instances of stay-at-home orders in place.