Youth crimes recorded by police have risen in Wyndham across a 12-month period.
Data from the Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) shows that between October, 2016, and September last year, Victoria Police made 645 arrests for crimes committed by offenders aged 10-17 in Wyndham compared to 628 arrests in the previous 12 months.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said although there were 645 arrests, that did not mean there were 645 individual offenders – but that a person arrested multiple times would be counted multiple times.
Out of all the arrests in Wyndham during the October 2016-September 17 period, police recorded the offender’s country of birth as Australia 320 times (376 times in the previous period), New Zealand 88 times (109 previously), Sudan 55 times (58 previously) and Egypt 20 times (six previously).
The news comes after Sudanese and South Sudanese representatives expressed concerns about their portrayal in the media.
Richard Deng, from the South Sudanese Community Association of Victoria, said if the media publicised crimes committed by people of African appearance, many Australians automatically assumed the offenders were from a Sudanese or South Sudanese background.
“There are 54 sovereign states in Africa and … not everyone who comes to Australia is from South Sudan,” he said.
Last week the CSA issued a statement which said that there were 846 Sudanese-born offenders recorded in Victoria in the year to September 30, 2017. In comparison, there were 59,048 Australian-born offenders, 1826 New Zealanders, 1555 Indians, 1063 UK and Irish-born people and 920 Vietnamese.
