Date:
31 Aug 2023

Message from the Chief Commissioner

I am pleased to introduce the 2023–2024 Victoria Police Corporate Plan, our first under the Keeping You Safe Strategy.

The Corporate Plan outlines the key initiatives Victoria Police will undertake in the year ahead across our priority areas of:

  • policing
  • people
  • partnerships.

We appreciate that the significant social, economic and technological changes the world is experiencing impact Victoria and policing. It is vital that Victoria Police works closely with communities and partner agencies to address the key community safety concerns that these changes create.

The Corporate Plan also outlines our commitment to improve the outcomes for specific communities.

In 2023–24, Victoria Police will work with Aboriginal people to support self-determination and reduce the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system.

We will also focus on expanding initiatives to keep young people out of the criminal justice system wherever possible, while still holding offenders to account.

More broadly, the sustainability of our communities is core business for Victoria Police.

In 2023–24, we will develop a framework to strengthen the environmental, social and governance factors that make a tangible contribution to the long-term liveability of Victoria.

We will continue to transform Victoria Police in 2023–24.

We will deploy an additional 502 police officers and additional 50 protective services officers, build and upgrade police stations across metropolitan and regional areas, and modernise key systems and processes.

Through the CultureWorks program, we will embed connection and collaboration, using sound judgement, and creation and innovation as fundamental elements of our workplace culture. In addition to allowing us to maintain community trust and confidence, CultureWorks will foster a safe and inclusive environment where every employee is proud to work for Victoria Police and to serve the community.

I am confident this 2023–24 Corporate Plan positions Victoria Police to respond effectively and ethically to the challenges and opportunities before us to keep Victoria and Victorians safe. I look forward to sharing our results throughout the year.

Decorative photo of Shane Patton, APM Chief Commissioner, Victoria Police. He is smiling and in Victoria Police Dress Uniform.

Shane Patton APM
Chief Commissioner

About this plan

The 2023–2024 Victoria Police Corporate Plan (the Corporate Plan) is aligned to the medium-term planning requirement set out in the Resource Management Framework published by the Department of Treasury and Finance.

The Corporate Plan forms part of an integrated organisational planning framework and maintains focus across the organisation. It is refreshed every year to reflect changes in organisational priorities, government objectives and community safety needs.

The Corporate Plan sits under the new Keeping You Safe: Victoria Police Strategy 2023–2028 (the Keeping You Safe Strategy) and outlines priority initiatives that form part of the road map towards achieving our vision for a safer Victoria.

About Victoria Police

Our role and functions

Victoria Police’s role is to serve the Victorian community and uphold the law so as to promote a safe, secure, and orderly society.

Victoria Police achieves this by:

  • protecting life and property
  • helping those in need of assistance
  • preventing offences
  • preserving the peace
  • detecting and apprehending offenders.

Victoria Police operates under the Victoria Police Act 2013.

Our services

Our services include:

  • responding to calls for assistance in matters of personal and public safety, emergencies, and serious incidents
  • preventing crime through a range of proactive community safety programs
  • detecting and investigating offences, and bringing those responsible for committing them to justice
  • supporting the judicial process to achieve efficient and effective court case management, providing safe custody for alleged offenders, supporting victims, and ensuring fair and equitable treatment of victims and offenders
  • promoting safe road-user behaviour.

Our values

Organisational values underpin Victoria Police’s policies, procedures, and practices. They also define how employees interact with the community and each other.

Our values are:

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    Respect

  • ""

    Leadership

  • ""

    Professionalism

  • ""

    Support

  • ""

    Integrity

  • ""

    Safety

  • ""

    Flexibility

Visit our values for more information.

Our assets

Victoria Police develops and maintains a high performing asset base that enable our staff to deliver safe and effective policing services.

Our assets and infrastructure include:

  • 331 police stations
  • 52 other buildings, including:
    • seven multi-disciplinary centres
    • one forensic facility and two forensic hubs
    • three storage facilities
    • four specialist training facilities
    • Victoria Police Centre.
  • 3548 vehicles.

Our people

Our organisation is made up of more than 21,000 employees.

We are committed to continue to work towards a workforce that reflects the diversity of the community we serve, and to providing a safe and equal workplace where our people are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness.

Breakdown of Victoria Police employees

  • Download 'Breakdown of Victoria Police employees'

Victoria Police regions

Victoria Police provides policing services to the Victorian community 24 hours a day, seven days a week, working to keep over 6.5 million Victorians safe.

Victoria Police operates across 54 Police Service Areas, within 21 divisions and four regions.

Victoria Police regions map

Our strategic direction

The Keeping You Safe Strategy came into effect on 1 July 2023.

It outlines our vision for a safer community and our mission to keep Victoria safe.

Over the next five years, Victoria Police will deliver its mission through:

  • Policing

    Highly visible and responsive policing.

  • People

    Skilled people, ready and able to respond.

  • Partnerships

    Strong partnerships across community, government and business.

These three focus areas are supported by three goals each that will be realised through a suite of initiatives and projects.

The benefits delivered by these initiatives will ensure that we continue our efforts to deliver strong outcomes for the Victorian community, in which:

  • everyone is safe and feels safe
  • those affected by crime feel supported
  • those who break the law are held to account
  • police work with the community and our partners to prevent crime, reduce harm and build a better, safer Victoria.

Our operating environment

Victoria Police operates in a constantly changing environment. Shifts over the next one to two years will influence Victoria Police’s policies and response.

These include:

  • increased risk of more frequent and severe concurrent emergencies, such as bushfires and floods, driven by climate change
  • decriminalisation of public drunkenness to move to a new health-based response model resulting in reduced police involvement
  • increased cost of living driven by global and local events
  • large increases in outer suburban populations will change patterns of demand on police services.

Victoria Police will continue to work with partner agencies and communities to address key themes such as:

  • the increase in youth offending
  • emerging technologies and the ways they enable criminal activity
  • the impact of mental health on offending and victimisation
  • and demand for police services across the state, particularly in country Victoria.

Our objectives and performance

Our mission is to keep the community safe: in their home, on the roads and public transport, online, and in public day and night.

Our performance indicators are:

  • community safety during the day and at night
  • community safety on public transport
  • crime statistics
  • number of road fatalities
  • number of road injuries.

Victoria Police monitors and reports on performance in line with government requirements, including the Victorian Government Budget Papers. This includes a detailed annual report and internal governance mechanisms.

Our progress regarding specific initiatives is monitored by, but not limited to:

  • Minister for Police
  • Implementation Monitor for Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants
  • Victims of Crime Commissioner
  • Public Sector Gender Equality Commissioner.

Our finances

Victoria Police has a budget of $4.13 billion in 2023-24.

We use this budget to deliver policing services to the community when and where it matters and to improve our capability and capacity to respond to changing demands.

Approved Expenditure Review Committee (state budget) funded asset investment programs and targets over the next four financial years are published in the 2023-24 State Budget Paper 4.

Our organisational risks

Victoria Police manages organisational risks in line with the Victorian Government’s Risk Management Framework, which assists us in the integration of risk management into our activities, functions, and decision-making processes.

Our commitment is to manage risk proficiently and in a manner that improves performance; encourages innovation; and supports the achievement of the organisation’s vision, service delivery and community safety performance objectives.

Our focus in 2023-2024

Victoria Police will progress and implement several initiatives in 2023–2024 to achieve our objectives and advance towards our vision for a safer Victoria.

Spotlight: The Aboriginal community

One of the key focus areas for Victoria Police in 2023-24 is to improve the way we interact with Aboriginal people.

Victoria Police supports the work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the first formal truth-telling process into injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria.

In May 2023, the Chief Commissioner of Police issued an unreserved apology to Aboriginal people for harm that has occurred as a result of interactions with police.

Over the next two years, we will implement a Chief Commissioner’s Statement of Commitment of organisation-wide uplift in how Victoria Police interacts with Aboriginal people, and progress actions required to deliver on the commitment.

Spotlight: Environmental impact

Victoria Police will continue to focus on reducing our impact on the environment.

As a large organisation with many vehicles and buildings, we want to show leadership in sustainability among our partners and the community.

We are committed to developing and implementing a five-year emissions reduction action plan to support net-zero Government Operations by 2030, including a Greener Buildings Project.

We will also make better choices for the environment when developing, maintaining, and purchasing goods and services, encouraging our suppliers to reflect the high standards we set ourselves.

Police are at the forefront in supporting our communities during and after climate-related emergencies and we must do our part to reduce the occurrences of natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.

Focus areas

  • Policing

  • People

  • Partnerships

Focus area: Policing

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Deliver exceptional services when and where they are needed

We will continue to strive to provide excellent and consistent policing services to the Victorian community by transforming our service delivery and operating model.

We will look at the way we prioritise demand, plan effective responses, allocate tasks, and coordinate our resources.

Making our staff allocation agile requires an integrated, enterprise-wide rostering system so that we can effectively deploy our people to where they are most needed.

Victoria Police will improve its capacity to respond to future demands and provide a more visible and consistent policing service to the community that supports safety and maintains confidence in Victoria Police. This includes on our roads where we have an active role and need to contribute to a strong road safety culture.

We will maintain our focus on providing strong and consistent responses to family violence, sexual offences, child abuse and serious and violent crimes.

We will strengthen the way we work with the community to prevent the harm caused by these crimes and we will continue to hold offenders to account.

Streamline our processes to improve every interaction

We will work to refresh our critical information and communication technology. This will ensure that our systems talk to each other, and our digital assets are updated so that our staff have the best available technology.

We will implement a Laboratory Information Management System to streamline the way we work in our Forensic Services Department.

We will continue moving away from paper-based correspondence and deliver an enterprise-wide electronic document system.

We will also be able to issue electronic penalty notices on the spot.

We will continue to improve our financial sustainability by implementing a program of efficiency measures and structural reforms, including delivering more enhanced financial functions through cloud technology platforms.

Disrupt crime, with a focus on emerging and technology-enabled crime

New and improved technologies offer great potential for serious and organised crime groups to pursue existing and new types of crime.

By adopting an agile and dynamic approach, with new techniques of prevention, detection, and investigation, we will seek to disrupt crime at every level and create a hostile environment for criminals.

In 2023–24 we will focus on preventing offences that cause high levels of harm to individuals and our community by implementing strategies targeting cybercrime, serious and organised crime, youth gangs, and illicit firearms. These strategies will set out a clear approach for Victoria Police, partner agencies and communities to deliver innovative solutions and best practice to prevent and address crime and keep communities safe.

We will continue to implement the Victoria Police Drug Strategy 2020–2025 to minimise the harmful impact of drugs in the Victorian community.

In addition, we will review the effectiveness of our VIPER Taskforce, and make recommendations that will lead to us improving the operating model so that we have the best method of targeting serious, violent, and organised crime.

Spotlight: Protecting confidential information

Victoria Police holds confidential information, and it is our responsibility to keep that information safe.

We have developed a cyber security strategy that articulates the current risk of cyber-attack and controls to improve our defences to an appropriate level given the critical functions of Victoria Police, our systems, and our data.

The strategy focuses on four key areas: protect, detect, recover and educate. We must protect the information, detect where the attacks are coming from, recover any lost information and educate our people so that we maintain community trust and confidence.

To provide highly visible and responsive policing, we will:

  • transform Victoria Police’s service delivery and operating model
  • plan and deliver an electronic penalty infringement notices solution
  • plan and deliver an enterprise-wide electronic document and records management solution
  • plan and deliver an integrated, enterprise-wide rostering and time sheet solution
  • deliver a suite of finance and procurement-related systems solutions
  • improve our financial sustainability through a program of efficiency measures and structural reforms.

Focus area: People

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Build, train and equip our workforce

The Victorian community invests significant responsibility and trust in the people who work for Victoria Police.

We will recruit and train additional police and protective services officers.

In relation to attrition, we will continue recruitment to fill vacant police positions over the balance of this financial year.

We will develop a strategic workforce plan to better manage our workforce today and plan for our future.

We will further embrace diversity and inclusion through the implementation of the Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Framework, so that our workforce reflects the community we serve.

We will explore how we can train our people more effectively, so they are able to respond with confidence and empathy, safely and respectfully.

Our people need the best equipment and facilities to help them do their job so we will continue to roll out conducted energy devices to all frontline police and protective services officers, deliver an increased number of preliminary breath testing devices with enhanced functionality, and we will build new police stations and upgrade existing ones.

Strengthen our culture through collaboration, innovation, and sound judgement

The culture of our workforce is critical.

We will focus on embedding our CultureWorks program into all our training programs, so our people can bring sound judgement to their decisions and collaborate and innovate where they can.

We will continue to implement enhanced promotional processes through the Integrated Leadership Development Framework.

We will ensure all our police, protective services officers and police custody officers have completed Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Training so we can improve our interactions with Aboriginal people.

To ensure we achieve best practice, we are reforming our complaints and discipline system to strengthen accountability and community confidence.

We will also continue to progress recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants.

Ensure our people are safe and well supported

The safety and wellbeing of our people is a priority for Victoria Police.

We will develop a new operational safety strategy to ensure our frontline members have the best training and skills to keep each person, in every interaction, safe.

We will be proactive to provide support to our staff who are injured so they can return to work as soon as possible.

We will strive for sustainable gender equality through our Equal, Safe & Strong: Victoria Police Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2030, so that all Victoria Police employees work in a safe and equal workplace, have access to equal resources and opportunities, and are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness.

We will finalise negotiating the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) for our police and protective services officers. We are working with our people to ensure the EBA meets the needs of both the organisation and our workforce, including working towards protective services officers being able to move between work units, working towards a fully integrated workforce. This will also be the case when negotiating commences for the EBA for our Victorian Public Service employees.

We will support our people in a diverse and flexible career as much as possible, while balancing the need to deliver services 24/7 to the Victorian community.

Spotlight: Health Safety and Wellbeing Taskforce

We will support our people through the newly established Health Safety and Wellbeing Taskforce.

Once fully implemented, there will be six health safety and wellbeing hubs across the state. These hubs will deliver preventative and proactive support to our people by having co-located mental health clinicians, injury management consultants, educators, health and safety advisors, career advisors and human resource business partners.

The hub members will be on the ground in police stations de-stigmatising mental health issues with a focus on prevention, encouraging employees to seek help as well as facilitating stay at work and return to health initiatives.

The first of the six hubs will commence operating in Eastern Region in 2023.

Our people are important. To ensure we have skilled people, ready and able to respond, we will:

  • attract, recruit, train and deploy 502 additional police and 50 protective services officers
  • roll out conducted energy devices to every frontline police officer and protective services officers
  • modernise our police facilities through our infrastructure program of works
  • progress recommendations from the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants.

Focus area: Partnerships

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More than 500 partners from government, not-for-profits, and private industry have told us they value our people and believe we show commitment to reduce crime and keep Victoria safe.

There is a strong appetite to work with us to co-deliver services. We are aware that we cannot achieve our goals alone.

We are committed to working with our partners across community, government, and business to achieve a safer community.

Connect with partners to respond to local issues

To build community trust and confidence, we will continue to connect with our community partners through the Neighbourhood Policing Framework, and work with the community on solutions to local crime and safety concerns.

Collaborate with partners to enhance crime prevention and reduce harm

We will continue our work with road safety partners including the Department of Transport and Planning and the Transport Accident Commission to reduce the number of lives lost and serious injuries suffered on our roads and to make our roads safer. This work will include targeting road safety risks such as speed, drugs, and alcohol.

We will continue working closely with our partners to enhance practices and responses to children, young people, and other priority community groups to reduce the harm caused by family violence, sexual offending, and child abuse.

We will connect with local partners to respond to issues relating to young people to ensure that those at the greatest risk have access to the support they need.

We will expand the Embedded Youth Outreach Program to more locations, and we will launch a Victoria Police youth strategy.

We will continue to strengthen existing partnerships with criminal justice stakeholders including the courts, the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office, and the Office of Public Prosecutions, generating trust and effective collaboration.

We will continuously improve and promote proactive and comprehensive disclosure practices – aiming to be consistent, fair, equitable and transparent, and exercising appropriate powers and discretion to drive productive and positive justice outcomes.

Shifts to best practice evidence-based responses across a range of community safety issues can result in changes to legislation, and in turn changes to the way we respond.

We will continue to support the implementation of new health-led models for emergency responses to mental health crises and public drunkenness, which will see reduced police involvement.

We will continue to contribute to government-led legislative reform on critical issues, including the minimum age of criminal responsibility supported by an alternative service model, bail and youth justice.

We will continue to implement recommendations from the review into the private security industry, including streamlining the licensing system and increasing enforcement presence.

Invest in and grow strategic partnerships

Technology has been, and will continue to, play an important part in how we operate.

We will work with our partners to explore the threats and opportunities presented by emerging technologies to find ways to enhance the safety of the Victorian community.

Subject to national agreement, we will support the implementation of a national firearms register.

Spotlight: The Aboriginal Youth Cautioning Program

Victoria Police is committed to reducing the number of Aboriginal young people in the criminal justice system.

As part of this commitment, the Aboriginal Youth Cautioning Program (AYCP) was introduced in November 2019.

This is an enhanced police cautioning approach that aims to improve outcomes for Aboriginal young people by diverting them from further contact with the justice system.

The AYCP provides Aboriginal young people in contact with police with an opportunity to connect with elders and culturally appropriate support services in their local area.

This connection supports young people to address the factors underlying their contact with police.

This program was developed in partnership with Aboriginal communities and draws upon local Aboriginal culture, knowledge, and communities to ensure a tailored response for young people.

The program incorporates the principles of Aboriginal self-determination, early intervention, and harm reduction.

Initially trialled in Bendigo, Dandenong and Echuca, the AYCP has now expanded to cover over 20 Local Government Areas throughout the state.

Further expansion will see five dedicated Aboriginal Cautioning Support Officers employed who will oversee the daily operation of the AYCP and support its state-wide expansion.

To develop and maintain strong partnerships across community, government, and business, we will:

  • engage partners to support the design, function and cost of a national firearms register
  • support a health-led response to public drunkenness with reduced police involvement
  • support a health-led response to mental health crisis with reduced police involvement
  • continue the roadside drug testing program to test 150,000 motorists each year
  • continue to provide a targeted joint response to high-risk young people in areas of high need through the provision of an Embedded Youth Outreach Program.

Our stakeholders

Victoria Police works with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure efficient, effective, economical, and timely delivery on our objectives and priorities.

Our stakeholders include:

Asset outlook

Approved ERC-funded asset investment programs and targets over the next four financial years are published in the 2023–24 State Budget Paper 4.

New projects

Existing projects