NEW statistics reveal crime in the Horsham, Northern Grampians and Ararat shires has dropped since this time last year.
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Latest data from the Crime Statistics Agency revealed that overall crime rates decreased across the region, however certain specific offences had increased.
The data broke down the number of recorded offences between July 2017 and June 2018 by Local Government Area and offence.
In the Horsham Rural City Council area, recorded offences decreased from 2578 in 2016-17 to 2483 in 2017-18. This was a drop of 4.1 per cent.
However, assault and related offences rose from 284 in 2016-17 to 338 in 2017-18; while stalking, harassment and threatening behaviour increased from 66 reported offences to 83.
Sexual offences also increased from 70 to 108 reported incidents.
CSA chief statistician Catherine Andersson said sexual assault offences had increased across the state.
“The introduction of a number of new sexual offence codes in the last three years has contributed to this increase,” she said.
In the Northern Grampians Shire Council area, recorded offences dropped significantly.
Statistics decreased from 1252 recorded offences in 2016-17 to 1018 in 2017-18.
Crimes against the person decreased in the area from 302 recorded offences to 249. Drug offences also decreased from 169 to 127.
Numbers were a little closer in the Ararat Rural City Council area, with 1320 recorded offences in 2017-18.
This was a small drop from the 2016-17 total of 1340. Crimes against the person increased in the area from 269 to 298.
However, drug offences were down from 162 to 145; as were property and deception offences which decreased from 461 to 447.
In the Yarriambiack Shire Council, the total of recorded offences rose substantially from 454 to 522. Buloke Shire Council also saw a large increase of recorded offences, from 177 to 247.
Recorded offences dropped in the Hindmarsh Shire Council from 411 to 336, along with the West Wimmera Shire Council which experienced a decrease of 198 to 162.
Across the state, the number of criminal incidents dropped by 5.6 per or 22,876 incidents, while the criminal incident rate also declined by 7.8 per cent to 5921.9 incidents per 100,000 people.
These are the lowest figures since the year ending June 2015. Police Minister Lisa Neville said the state’s victimisation rate was at its lowest in five years.
“There’s still more work to do – we want to drive the crime rate down as low as possible,” she said.