Has violent crime really dropped for the first time since 2018?
The Spinoff Daily, Wednesday February 26
Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily.
Today on The Spinoff: The tense backdrop to Winston Peters’ trip to Beijing, New Zealand trembles beneath barrage of wake-up calls, and the problem with outsourcing your emails to the machine.
Alice Neville: “On Tuesday afternoon, a shady-looking trio of hooded figures appeared in a post on the National Party’s social media accounts, the image overlaid with bold text proclaiming, ‘Violent crime has dropped for the first time since 2018.’ There was no further context, but a press release from police minister Mark Mitchell and justice minister Paul Goldsmith had the details. ‘Police data shows that violent crime has fallen for the first time since 2018, indicating that the government’s tough-on-crime and victims-first approach is working,’ it read.
‘After year-on-year increases in violent crime since 2018, it is encouraging to see a reversal of this rise with a 2% drop in the numbers for 2024,’ said Mitchell in the release. ‘It is especially encouraging when you consider that violent crime increased by 51% between 2018 and 2023.’
A 51% increase in violent crime in five years is an alarming stat, but as The Spinoff has detailed in the past, the NZ Police ‘victimisations’ data the coalition government regularly uses to illustrate the previous government’s alleged ‘soft-on-crime’ failures – and, now, its own ‘tough-on-crime’ successes – comes with some caveats.”
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