Media Releases

3 April 2007

Painting a picture of crime in New Zealand

using the New Zealand Crime & Safety Survey 2006

Most New Zealand adults did not experience crime and there is no evidence of any change in the level of violent crime since 2000. That’s just some of the findings of a nationwide survey of 5,416 people about their experiences of crime that took place in 2005.

Even when the net was widely drawn to include a range of minor offences that were technically criminal, 61 percent of those surveyed had not experienced any crime during that year, and 19 percent experienced just one offence.

Defining crime

Many New Zealanders do not look at crime in the same way as the law defines it. A significant finding from the survey was that 40 percent of crimes were not thought of as such by victims. This has important implications for those working in this area. Of the estimated 2.75 million offences committed in 2005, 1.1 million (40 percent) were not considered to be a crime by those on the receiving end, regardless of whether they thought the offence itself was serious or distressing.

Sexual offences were most likely to be thought of as not being a crime by 60 percent of victims. More than half of all threats and assaults were also not regarded as criminal.

New Zealanders were more likely to consider theft of and from vehicles, and burglary as crimes, but not theft of personal property.

Those who did not think what happened to them was a crime were equally divided as to whether the offence was ‘wrong but not a crime’ or ‘just something that happens.’

New standards in survey design sets the New Zealand Crime & Safety Survey 2006 apart from two previous surveys. It also means that findings cannot be fully compared.

New questions were included in 2006 to explore victims’ perceptions of the seriousness of offences they experienced. On the basis of victims’ scores, the researchers assessed about a third of offences to be ‘most serious’, a third to be ‘fairly serious’, and a third ‘least serious’.

Vehicle theft was the offence most commonly rated as ‘most serious’ with more than half of these considered in that light. Victims rated less than half of all assaults, sexual offences, threats, robberies and burglaries as ‘most serious’.

The offences judged least serious by victims were household damage, thefts from or vandalism to vehicles, and thefts of household and personal property.

The survey showed that victims can consider what happened to them to be very serious, while at the same time not necessarily believing it to be against the law. However, two areas where these views were closely aligned were vehicle thefts—usually rated as both serious and a crime—and thefts of personal property which were seen as less serious and less likely to be considered a crime than the average.

Crime victims

The survey reveals that 6 percent of adults experienced half of all the offences measured in the survey. Just 2 percent of adults experienced three quarters (76 percent) of all threats and assaults by partners or former partners.

Women were more likely than men to experience partner threats and assaults to themselves or to their personal property more than once. Future analysis will investigate the seriousness of these crimes experienced by male and female victims. Men were more likely than women to be victims of confrontational offences that involved people they did not know well.

The survey was able to identify risk factors associated with being a victim of crime and further analysis will take place over the next year to refine this information. There was no ‘average’ risk of experiencing crime. In 2005, the risks of experiencing crime were consistently high for sole parents, students, people aged 15-24, those unemployed or on a benefit, people renting properties, living in the most deprived areas (as measured by the NZ Deprivation Index), Māori and Pacific peoples, and people whose marital status was single, de facto, divorced or separated.

The risk of crime varied for the type of offence, but broadly the picture of risks is similar. In 2005, those most at risk of burglary were sole parents; vehicle owners who were most at risk of offences involving vehicles were flatmates, beneficiaries and students; young women aged 15-24 were most at risk of sexual offences; and sole parents were most at risk of threats or assaults.

A follow-up analysis of the high risk of victimisation among sole parent families will explore further why some sole parents are heavily victimised and others are not.

Groups with less risk were people who were retired, widowed, aged over 60, living alone, couples without children, home owners (rather than renters), and people living in rural or secondary urban areas. There were also low risks for people in rural and small urban areas. Some of those in these areas have low socioeconomic status based on occupational status (measured by the NZ Socioeconomic Index) - rural workers for instance.

The makeup of crime

Delving further into the makeup of crime in New Zealand reveals that the total number of personal offences was estimated at 1.8 million in 2005 and around 18 percent of adults experienced a personal offence. A quarter of all offences were assaults and 22 percent were threats. Injury resulted from half of all assaults. Sexual offences made up 7 percent of all offences.

The way that the survey was designed, compared to other international crime surveys, means that it is likely to have produced a higher count of interpersonal crime. These differences need to be taken into consideration when making international comparisons.

When adjustments for design changes in the survey are taken into account to make comparisons possible, the amount of personal crime, including violent crime, appears to be unchanged from 2000.

There were an estimated 939,000 household offences in 2005, affecting around 30 percent of all households. When adjustments for design changes in the survey are taken into account to make comparisons possible, there appears to be an increase in household offences, which includes such offences as burglary and vehicle crime, since 2000, but not a large one. Even adjusting for survey design changes between the two surveys, it is not possible to be certain about the real differences.

Using the new legal definition of burglary accounted for 12 percent of all offences and 13 percent were vandalism to household or personal property. A further 5 percent were vehicle vandalism and 5 percent were theft of, from, or interference with, vehicles. A new screener question was included in 2006 that would have helped people remember incidents of household vandalism.

Reporting crime

The survey includes a vast amount of crime which is either not reported or not recorded in official Police Crime Statistics—and often referred to as the ‘dark figure’ of crime.

There are many reasons why offences do not come to Police attention. Clearly, if 40 percent of offences that occurred were not considered by the victim to have been a crime, many are not likely to have been reported. Nor is reporting as likely if victims consider offences to have been crimes, yet rate the offence itself as not serious. The survey showed that nearly half of all offences were not reported because the victim thought the matter was not important enough.

Nearly half of all offences considered to be crimes were reported, as were around half of those considered ‘most serious’. Less than one in five of the least serious offences were reported to Police.

In total, around a third of all offences were reported to the Police. This varied by offence type. For instance 84 percent of vehicle thefts and nearly half of all thefts from vehicles and burglaries were reported. Just over a third of all assaults were reported. Reporting was more likely where an insurance claim was made.

Only 9 percent of sexual offences and 14 percent of household thefts were reported. In February 2007, Government announced nearly $1 million for research into sexual violence, conviction rates and victim support, including ways to improve the likelihood of victims making formal complaints.

It is very difficult to compare Police figures with NZCASS figures, because the Police record crimes against children and commercial properties, and a number of other crimes that cannot be measured by NZCASS. The researchers used an adjusted set of Police figures that could be matched to the NZCASS offences. The results showed that Police recorded just 27% of the offences that NZCASS estimated had been reported to Police.

Using the amount of crime recorded by Police and the amount of crime measured by the NZCASS, it is possible to estimate that the actual amount of crime that takes place in any year is about eight times more than the official Police Crime Statistics. However, there will not be eight times as many crimes of the same severity as measured in the Police Crime Statistics, because more serious offences are more likely to be reported.

For the first time in New Zealand, victims were asked about their experiences when reporting crime to Police. More than half said the Police immediately dealt with the matter or told them that they would not deal with it. Nearly two thirds felt that the Police showed an appropriate level of interest and almost three quarters said that the Police had been respectful. However, just under a quarter said that the Police kept them well-informed with the investigation and just over a quarter said that the Police had not investigated at all.

Victims’ overall satisfaction was closely linked to how well-informed they had been. Half of the victims were satisfied with the Police response, which was similar to responses to the same question in the previous survey.

Rating the system

People were asked whether they thought different groups in the criminal justice sector were doing a good job. Police topped the list with 60 percent agreeing they were doing an excellent or good job. This also compares favourably with the British Crime Survey that rates Police at 48 percent—again, the highest of the groups measured.

Juries were fractionally behind Police and nearly half of all people rated judges as doing a good job. Under half rated criminal lawyers, probation officers and the Prison Service as doing a good job.

Many people did not consider they had sufficient knowledge to provide a rating and international findings have shown that poor ratings are linked to lack of knowledge. It is likely that educating people about the criminal justice system would improve their levels of confidence about the system.

New Zealand Crime & Safety Survey 2006 Key Findings

Pat Mayhew & James Reilly, published by the Ministry of Justice, Wellington, 2007

http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2007/crime-safety-survey-2006/key-findings/index.html