submitted 1 year ago by SamC@lemmy.nz to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!

Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!

Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.

So how’s it going?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes and no. Overall the murder rate is going down (barring 15 March 2019): https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/crime-rate-statistics

There's more recent years in this PDF: https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/historic-new-zealand-murder-offences-1926-2021.pdf

So we get 10-11 murders per 1 million population. This is half what it was in the 90s.

However, there has been a recent violent crime increase. This is also not unexpected, as Labour has a policy of reducing the prison population. Putting less people in prison has longer term societal benefits but you can imagine it would lead to shorter term increases in violent crime, which does appear to be the case: https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/the-whole-truth/130965380/the-whole-truth-has-violent-crime-gone-up-under-labour

[-] SamC@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 year ago

However, there has been a recent violent crime increase. This is also not unexpected, as Labour has a policy of reducing the prison population. Putting less people in prison has longer term societal benefits but you can imagine it would lead to shorter term increases in violent crime, which does appear to be the case

It does suggest rehabilitation isn't working though (assuming any increase is actually mostly from people who were previously convicted).

That said, crime stats seem to be so fraught, it's really hard to tell what's going on with any degree of precision

[-] luthis@lemmy.nz 3 points 1 year ago

There's a lot to be said for having something in place to prevent the need for prison and rehab in the first place.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

Not necessarily. If you have a 50% recidivism rate but hold less people in prison, crime rates will go up even if the rate doesn't change, simply because there are more people out of prison. Even if the recidivism rate goes down you may have more crime. But if over time the lower recidivism rate means less people go back to prison, over time you should see overall crime drop. This is probably a generatonal time period though. Short term higher crime rates for longer term gain.