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Property-related victimisations

A victimisation refers to an instance of a person, organisation or premises being exploited for a given type of offence (where an offence is any act or omission by a person that is subject to a penalty imposed by the New Zealand legal system). Property-related offences are defined as those where the intent of the offence is to obtain property or in some cases to obtain ‘a benefit’ (an advantage or privilege). The methods of acquisition include theft, the use of extortion or blackmail, or the use of deception [16].

This indicator presents the number of victimisations (theft, burglary, robbery and extortion) by month for the greater Christchurch area (stations from Canterbury Metro Area and Canterbury Rural combined to approximate the greater Christchurch boundary), from July 2014 to June 2020.

The figure shows reported monthly victimisation data for the period July 2014 to June 2020. Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020, the number of victimisations for theft fluctuated from a low of 892 in September 2014 to a high of 1,804 in January 2020. The figure also shows the marked decrease in property-related victimisations during the national COVID-19 alert level-4 lockdown. Similarly, the number of victimisations for burglary has ranged from a low of 389 in July 2014 to a high of 847 in January 2019. There appears to be a trend of an overall increase in the number of theft and burglary victimisations (excluding the lockdown period). Victimisations for robbery and extortion are recorded at substantially lower numbers. This number appears relatively stable, ranging from a low of 12 in January 2015 to a high of 60 in August 2016 (generally less than 30 per month from mid-2018 to June 2020). Note that statistical trend analysis was not available for any of these data.

The Ministry of Justice also provides information on victimisations from the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey (NZCVS). The NZCVS provides a fuller picture of crime in New Zealand than administrative data because it captures incidents of crime that may not have been reported or recorded elsewhere. The NZCVS is a nationwide, face-to-face, continuous, representative survey of adults aged 15 years and over. Respondents are asked about incidents of crime they experienced in New Zealand during the 12-month period preceding the survey interview. In Canterbury, 34.3 percent of respondents to the second NZCVS 2018-19 reported being victimised (all types of offences) once or more during the last 12-months; up from 29.8 percent in the first 2018 survey (New Zealand 30.5% and 29.3%, respectively). For property offences such as theft and/or damage, 5.2 percent of responding households (i.e., where the survey respondent’s household was offended against) in Canterbury reported that they were victimised once or more during the last 12-months (pooled data from cycle-1 and cycle-2); up from 4 percent in cycle-1 (New Zealand 4.9% and 4.1%, respectively).