CHO order breaches skyrocket

BREACHES of the chief health officer’s restrictions are the criminal offence that spiked the most over the past year in Victoria.

New figures released on Thursday by the Crime Statistics Agency showed public health and safety offences rose by a staggering 432 per cent in the past 12 months.

The number of public health offences spiked from 6115 in the year ending June 30, 2020, to 32,561 in the year ending June 30, 2021, most of which were breaches of Brett Sutton’s Covid-19 directions.

Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent said the rapid increase was due to Mr Dutton’s direction only being enforced for about three months of the previous financial year.

Breaches of family violence order offences also increased significantly over the past 12 months, up 15 per cent to 55,252 offences. Family incidents also increased 5.9 per cent from 88,205 to 93,440.

But despite the rise in these two key categories, the overall criminal incident rate in Victorian fell by 6.9 per cent in the past year to 378,877 incidents.

The number of individual offences also fell by 4 per cent to 522,486.