Alleged Offender Incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status

An alleged offender incident is an incident involving one or more offences where an individual, business or organisation has been recorded as an alleged offender. For more information about counting rules, please refer to the Explanatory Notes (External link).

Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander status for alleged offender incidents are based on the most frequent recording of the Indigenous status for each offender. Under this counting rule, a person has either a yes or no response to the Standard Indigenous Question (SIQ) on their record, then the most frequent recorded response is taken as correct. If the person only has one meaningful response, then that response stands across all records. If a person appears in the dataset two different times with a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ in the records, a ‘yes’ response is taken over a ‘no’ response. For more information on how this counting rule operates see the Explanatory Notes (External link).

For the purposes of the presentation of these data the term Aboriginal refers to the most frequent response a person has provided to Victoria Police when the SIQ was asked (Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander status).

Key movements in the number and rate of alleged offender incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status

Victorian alleged offender incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders status, 10 year trend

Alleged Offender Incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status  - Tabular Visualisation

Number of alleged offender incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status by principal offence category

To best represent the type of offence associated with an incident involving multiple offences, the most serious offence within the incident is determined and this becomes the principal offence to represent the incident.

Notable movements – alleged offender incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status

In the last 12 months, the number of Aboriginal alleged offender incidents increased across all principal offence categories, except for Public order and security offences. In the 12 months to June 2020, the number of alleged offender incidents with a principal offence of Property and deception offences increased by 10.8% (597 incidents), Crimes against the person increased by 11.2% (362 incidents), Other offences increased by 2,427.3% (267 incidents), Justice procedure offences increased by 9.4% (171 incidents) and Drug offences increased by 23.6% (138 incidents).

In the year ending June 2020 data two new COVID-19 related offences codes were introduced (837AP REFUS/FAIL COMPLY DIR/REQ AUTH OFF (IND) and 837AQ REFUS/FAIL COMPLY DIR/REQ AUTH OFF (B/C)) and are included in the Public health and safety offences. For more information about the impacts of COVID-19 on crime to end of June 2020 please see Recorded offences or the Police-recorded crime trends in Victoria during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the last five years, the number of Aboriginal alleged offender incidents with a principal offence of Property and deception offences increased by 11.8% (645 incidents), Crimes against the person increased by 20.3% (608 incidents), Justice procedures offences increased by 24.9% (396 incidents), Other offences increased by 2,427.3% (267 incidents) and Drug offences increased by 53.0% (250 incidents). 

Alleged offender incidents by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Status by principal offence, 5 year trend

Please note that movements in recorded crime data may be impacted by changes in legislation and operational police practice. Information is available about notable changes in the Explanatory Notes (External link), refer to this information when comparing data over time.