Crime down 30%

The Ministry of Justice has just published the latest crime and safety survey, and it has found the incidence of crime dropped 30% from 2008 to 2013, or from 2.7 million incidents to 1.9 million.

This is not based on whether crime is reported to the Police. It is a scientifically robust survey of around 7,000 New Zealanders and hence is unaffected by whether the Police target particular crimes or not.

The report is here.

Some highlights:

• Incidents down by 787,000 over the last five years (dropped 201,000 the previous three years)
• Household incidents down 40% and personal incidents down 25%
• Assaults down 232,000
• Robberies down 32,000
• Incidence rate per 100 households dropped from 52 to 29
• Incidence rate per 100 persons dropped from 53 to 38
• Number of adult victims of crime dropped from 1,260,000 to 865,000

So these are great trends. As I said, this survey is far more robust than Police stats which can be affected by stuff such as policing priority decisions. The incidence rate of crime has dropped quite massively since 2008, and that is a good thing.

Also of interest is some of the data on domestic violence and sexual offending

• 6% of women and 4% of men were victims of violence from an intimate partner during the year
• 2% of women and 0.5% of men were victims of sexual offending from an intimate partner during the year
• 26% of women and 14% of men have had partner violence at least once in their lifetime
• 22% of women have had distressing sexual touching, 11% attempted rape and 11% rape

That’s distressingly high levels of rape.