The Crime Statistics Agency of Victoria's latest report was released on Thursday.

It showed in the 12 months to June 30, Breaches of Orders was the most common type of criminal incident police dealt with in Horsham Rural City. Offences in this category include breaching family violence orders, intervention orders and bail conditions.

Horsham Inspector Di Thomson said just three months earlier, in the 12 months to March 31, this category was the sixth most common. She said the increase reflected the effectiveness of police in charging people when they did violate the conditions of their orders.

"It shows we are responding to the community's needs. Most of those are breaches of family violence and intervention orders," she said.

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"It's an absolute concern there are residents who don't understand the orders are in place to keep people safe, that go ahead and breach them. I think residents will see the number decrease as education around the consequences increases."

Inspector Thomson said when people breached court orders, it constituted another criminal offence. She said people would then be spoken to, arrested and charged.

"It becomes a secondary investigation, which is traumatic for everyone involved," she said.

Inspector Thomson also noted the number of family violence incidents had decreased in Horsham in the past 12 months.

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"Something not talked about in the statistics is clearance rates," she said.

"The Horsham Police Service Area has around a 95 per cent clearance rate for identifying and arresting offenders. That supersedes any other statistics we are trying to extrapolate."

Overall, there were 1310 criminal incidents recorded in Horsham in the 12 months to June 30, the lowest number since 2013. This was driveny by drops of around 100 incidents each in the assault and theft offence categories.

The Crime Statistics Agency of Victoria defines "criminal incident" as a criminal event that may include one or more offences, alleged offenders and victims, and that is recorded on a single date and at one location.

The organisation says the criminal incident count is designed to be a more representative measure of instances of crime than the number of offences.

In both the Hindmarsh and West Wimmera shires, the number of criminal incidents increased slightly over the 12-month period, driven by more thefts and burglaries respectively.

In the Rural City of Ararat the highest crime statistic was for theft, with 142 recorded incidents across a 12 month period ending June 30.

This figure is level with the previous year's of 138 incidences of theft.

Recorded incidences of assault and related offences dropped very slightly, at 136 in 2018-19 to June 30, compared with 150 for the previous financial year.

Sexual offences increased from 31 the previous financial year to 40.

The latest statistics release came three days after the state government announced it would set up a specialised farm crime unit.

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