March 27, 2014
Crime numbers not adding up
The Government has been accused of spinning the numbers on its Reducing Crime Strategy.
Kim Workman from Rethinking Crime and Punishment says that creates a risk that public support for the good work that is being done could be lost once people find out they were conned.
He says the announcement by Corrections Minister Anne Tolley that government is now over half way to achieving its target of a 25 per cent reduction in reoffending by 2017 does not relate to the numbers of offenders who have stopped offending.
He says the Corrections Department has confirmed that what has dropped is the rate of reoffending, and reconviction and reimprisonment rates have only dropped by a couple of percent.
Mr Workman says even those modest rates are just really a recovery of ground lost over the past three or four years.
He says a recent survey by the Ministry of Justice shows the public don’t trust the justice system, and inflated and misleading reporting will make that worse.
New Zealand First corrections spokesperson Le’aufa’amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor says the National Government has failed to make the streets safer, and some of the reported reduction in crime is because the police don’t have the resources to make the arrests.
He says some of the reduction is also to do with long-standing community initiatives that have nothing to do with the National-led Government.
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