Is crime going up in New Zealand?
27.5% of adults reported being victims of crime in the previous 12 months, down from 29.5% in the 2024 survey (Ministry of Justice, 2025).
Updated
The share of adults and households who were victims of crime in the previous 12 months, from the Ministry of Justice's NZ Crime and Victims Survey, by main offence type. The survey asks people directly, so it counts crime whether or not it was reported to Police.
The survey began in 2018. These tables show 2018 (the base year) and 2021 onwards; results for 2019 and 2019/20 (cycles 2 and 3) were published in earlier releases with a different layout and are not combined here. Survey estimates with 95% confidence intervals (published with each value). Small changes are often not statistically significant; Justice marks the changes that are.
Survey results include crimes people report experiencing, whether or not they told Police. Court and prison counts describe later stages of the justice system and cover different groups of people.
Read the period beside each number before comparing it with another figure. A monthly observation, a quarterly result and a financial year cover different spans of time. The latest release can also revise earlier observations. The chart and downloads keep the published periods so you can check which figures are being compared. A change in victims of crime describes what happened during that period; it does not by itself explain why it happened or identify the effect of a government policy. Definitions and coverage matter as much as the size of a change.
All offences: % of adults victimised was 29.5% in 2024, a year earlier.
The earliest observation on the same basis was 29.6% in 2018.
Victims of crime: definitions
The share of adults and households who were victims of crime in the previous 12 months, from the Ministry of Justice's NZ Crime and Victims Survey, by main offence type. The survey asks people directly, so it counts crime whether or not it was reported to Police.
- The survey began in 2018. These tables show 2018 (the base year) and 2021 onwards; results for 2019 and 2019/20 (cycles 2 and 3) were published in earlier releases with a different layout and are not combined here.
- Survey estimates with 95% confidence intervals (published with each value). Small changes are often not statistically significant; Justice marks the changes that are.
- Household offences are a % of households; personal offences are a % of adults (15+). 'All offences' is the % of adults who experienced any offence.
- Some estimates are suppressed as too unreliable; those years are left out rather than filled in.
- Not comparable with Police recorded crime, which only counts offences reported to and recorded by Police.
Show the figures
| Period | All offences: % of adults victimised (%) |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 27.5% |
| 2024 | 29.5% |
| 2023 | 31.6% |
| 2022 | 30.7% |
| 2021 | 29.0% |
| 2018 | 29.6% |
Survey cycle years (interviews spread over about 12 months; questions cover the previous 12 months). Source: Ministry of Justice. Lines break at basis changes and missing periods.
Victims of crime: questions for your AI
Download the data, attach it in your assistant, then paste the prompt.
The attached CSV is How many New Zealanders experience crime (Crime and Victims Survey), from Ministry of Justice. Answer: Is crime going up in New Zealand? Name the unit and period. Use only directly supported observations. Definitions: The share of adults and households who were victims of crime in the previous 12 months, from the Ministry of Justice's NZ Crime and Victims Survey, by main offence type. The survey asks people directly, so it counts crime whether or not it was reported to Police. Limits: The survey began in 2018. These tables show 2018 (the base year) and 2021 onwards; results for 2019 and 2019/20 (cycles 2 and 3) were published in earlier releases with a different layout and are not combined here. Survey estimates with 95% confidence intervals (published with each value). Small changes are often not statistically significant; Justice marks the changes that are. Household offences are a % of households; personal offences are a % of adults (15+). 'All offences' is the % of adults who experienced any offence. Some estimates are suppressed as too unreliable; those years are left out rather than filled in. Not comparable with Police recorded crime, which only counts offences reported to and recorded by Police.
More questions about victims of crime
Other questions this topic can answer directly.
Victims of crime: sources
The source publication, licence and snapshot used to build this page.
- Organisation
- Ministry of Justice, NZ Crime and Victims Survey: how much crime is there
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Source: Ministry of Justice, NZ Crime and Victims Survey, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Snapshot
- data/raw/justice-nzcvs/2026-10-10_71252d209703.xlsx
- SHA256
- 71252d209703e22d8398563bfefaecd46a0e632028667fceb3b11f50886dbd90
- Retrieved
- 10 October 2026