Judith Collins: Crime and reoffending rates continue to fall through Better Public Services

The latest results released under Better Public Services indicate that recorded crime and reoffending rates continued to fall in the year to September 2013.

The report indicates the Justice sector is on track to exceed the Government's Better Public Service targets to reduce the total recorded crime rate by 15%, the recorded violent crime rate by 20% and the youth crime and re-offending rate by 25% by 2017.

Justice Minister Judith Collins attributed the improvements to increased collaboration between the Ministry of Justice, Police, Corrections and Courts. She said Better Public Services also aims to strengthen support for victims of crime. "We’ve embarked on a comprehensive programme of reform to protect communities, prevent crime, and put victims first, with levies on offenders, new laws, and new services for victims".

Further information on the targets for reducing crime can be found on the Ministry of Justice website.

Further information on the target for reducing the physical abuse of children is available on the Ministry of Social Development website.

The Government announced the Better Public Services '10 challenging results' in March 2012, the targets in June 2012 and released the Action Plans in August 2012.

Data have previously been released for:

• the year to June 2012
• the year to March 2013

For comment on the use of administrative data in measuring trends in family violence over time, see Gulliver, P., Fanslow, J. (2012). Measurement of family violence at a population level: What might be needed to develop reliable and valid family violence indicators? Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, The University of Auckland

Media:

Excellent progress in reducing reoffending, Beehive, 24.03.2014

Collaboration key to keeping crime down, Beehive, 20.02.2014

Image: 3D Bar Graph Meeting by Scott Maxwell Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)