Criminals are being held to account despite nearly 70,000 arrests in the past year, Victoria’s Police Minister says, as youth offending continues to rise.

Overall crime in Victoria rose 9.1 per cent in the 12 months to June, with 552,228 criminal offences recorded, according to crime statistics released on Thursday.

While this is the highest level in the past decade, Victoria Police said the crime rate – an increase of 6.7 per cent per 100,000 people – ranked fifth highest in the same period.

Police Minister Anthony Carbines said the number of arrests demonstrated the force was working hard to hold offenders to account.

Police made 68,579 arrests and laid 189,666 charges in the past year.

“What we’re doing is demonstrating in the statistics that 70,000 people have been arrested and held to account for breaking the law,” Carbines said on Thursday.

“They’re absolutely working.”

Crimes committed by children aged 10-17 and youth offenders aged 18-24 rose to 49,135, a 12.4 per cent increase year-on-year.

Child crime reached its highest level in 12 years, with those aged between 14 and 17 responsible for the most offences in that category, a 23 per cent increase for that age group.

“There is a particular cohort of young offenders, repeat offenders, who continue to disregard the law,” Carbines said.

Two major police operations targeting youth gangs, home burglaries and car thefts resulted in more than 3150 arrests in the past year. That equated to nine young people – including gang members, burglars and car thieves – being arrested every day.

Robberies remain the top category for child offending, followed by car thefts, burglaries and assaults.

Opportunistic young thieves are driving the high number of aggravated residential burglaries, which increased by 18 per cent to 6445 homes, mainly through targeting unlocked dwellings.

Despite that, the total number of Victorian homes being broken into remains well below levels from earlier in the past decade, police said.

Retail store thefts increased by almost 8000 to 32,540 offences, with shop steals reaching record highs as inflation, cost-of-living pressures and high interest rates continue to bite.

Alcohol remains the most frequently stolen item, followed by groceries, clothing and toiletries. Staff are also increasingly bearing the brunt of violent threats.

Meanwhile, Victoria Police are called to a family violence incident every five minutes as the scourge reaches a record high.

There were 98,816 family violence episodes, a 6.1 per cent increase year-on-year, while the number of family violence order breaches also increased by 3.2 per cent to 55,640.

“Around a quarter of all crime can be directly attributed to the scourge of family violence,” Victoria Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Chris Gilbert said.

Opposition police spokesman Brad Battin blamed the Labor government for neglecting crime by cutting $11 million from crime prevention, closing police stations and not filling 1000 vacancies within the police force.

But Carbines said the Allan government had invested $4.5 billion into Victoria Police and funded 3600 additional police members.

-AAP