While media reports of violent crime focus on homicide and related offences, these were only 0.2% of all reported violent crime in 2017. Most of the violent crimes reported were assaults – 78.4%.

Note: In 2014 New Zealand Police replaced the old official statistics on ‘recorded offences’ and ‘recorded apprehensions’ with new and improved statistical series based on ‘crime victimisations’ and ‘proceedings against offenders’. Statistics across the transition period are not comparable from old to new. A report describing the change in crime statistics is available on the New Zealand Police website.