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Burglaries behind rise in crime stats

Author
NZME staff,
Publish Date
Wed, 31 Aug 2016, 11:49AM
Constable Vaughan Perry tries to get prints from a window sill in Mt Albert.  (Peter Meecham, NZ Herald)
Constable Vaughan Perry tries to get prints from a window sill in Mt Albert. (Peter Meecham, NZ Herald)

Burglaries behind rise in crime stats

Author
NZME staff,
Publish Date
Wed, 31 Aug 2016, 11:49AM

UPDATED 12.26pm Burglaries are the main reason behind an increase in reported crime in New Zealand over the last year.

The official crime statistics for the year ending July 2016 were released today showing 11,171 more people were victims of offending than the year before.

The increase equate to a 2.3 per cent rise in crime.

Police Minister Judith Collins said more than three quarters of the increase could be attributed to burglaries.

Nationally, burglaries were up by 11.9 per cent from last year.

Auckland City was the only police district where burglaries numbers dropped.

The area had 10 per cent less burglaries than the 2014/15 year.

"There is no doubt in my mind that police are taking this increase in the burglary rate very seriously," Collins said.

Ms Collins expressed confidence offences will be recorded properly, with no repeat of data manipulation revealed two years ago, where Counties Manukau police reported a lower number of burglaries than had actually been the case.

She calls that incident a case of "incorrect coding" and said police take the issue very seriously, as do the public.

"I'm very confident that the police will deal with this absolutely appropriately."

As of this week police will attend every single household burglary.

Furthermore, they had raised house burglaries from a volume crime - encompassing general property theft - to a priority offence.

"These changes show that police recognise the significant impact that burglary has on individual, families and communities, and that they are committed to reducing this type of crime and increasing resolution rates," said Collins today.

In March, the NZ Herald's Hitting Home series revealed that 164 burglaries went unsolved each day in the year to December 3 - a resolution rate of just 9.3 per cent.

 

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