Rise in Police Family Violence Statistics

New statistics from the New Zealand Police show that all family violence-related offences have increased by 24.3% over the last year.

There was an increase in violent offences, “driven almost entirely by recorded family violence," said Assistant Commissioner Grant Nicholls.

There was an increase of 6000 offences in the Violence category in 2007, of these 5800 were family violence offences. This represents an increase of 31.5 % in family violence offences within the Violence category.

"This is not surprising when we take into account that there has been a huge focus on family violence with publicity and media campaigns designed to reduce tolerance to domestic violence," Mr Nicholls said.

New Zealand has had the lowest murder rate for a decade. There were 45 murders in 2007, and 41 resolved in the same year.

The resolution rate for violent crimes has remained steady and sits at 81.3 percent for 2007.

Sexual offences make up 0.8 percent of recorded crime. "We know that these crimes are under reported to police and the 1.7 percent increase in recorded sexual offences over the last year may therefore reflect increased reporting and reduced tolerance for such offending," Mr Nicholls said.

The resolution rate for sexual offences rose 2.4 percent, with a national resolution rate of 62.5 percent.

For more information see the NZ Police news release at www.police.govt.nz/news/release.html?id=3817 and the New Zealand Statistics website www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/table-builder/crime-tables/defau...