Kiwis have reported 182,379 residential burglaries to the police in the last four years. That’s an average of one every 12 minutes. So where is New Zealand’s most burgled neighbourhood? And how many of those burglaries have happened in yours? Herald data editor Chris Knox has crunched the
Crime interactive: How many burglaries in your neighbourhood?
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Burglary levels vary a lot from community to community around New Zealand.
Twenty-five per cent of neighbourhoods reported no burglaries at all - and only 10% of neighbourhoods reported 10 or more burglaries.
These neighbourhoods accounted to for 40% of all reported residential burglaries.
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Very few reported burglaries are resolved. Just 6.4% - 11,738 - of the burglaries reported over the last four years resulted in an offender being prosecuted. An additional 1195 resulted an offender being identified but not charged. And 7513 - 4.2% - reports were withdrawn or labelled not a crime. The remaining 161,933 - 89% of all reported burglaries are unresolved.
And the recently-released crime and victims survey estimated that last year only about 43% of burglaries were reported to police, meaning the actual number of burglaries in New Zealand in the last four years will be more like 400,000. But nobody has that data.
Most-burgled neighbourhood: Takanini South
Awakeri Wetlands in Takanini South tops the list of New Zealand’s most burgled neighbourhood - with 178 burglaries reported in the last four years.
It’s a sprawling subdivision of identical double-storey new builds - many of which are for sale.
The Herald spoke to one woman said she’s only lived there a year and is already trying to find somewhere else to live: from the moment she moved in people started stealing her family’s shoes from the front door.
“We noticed most of my brother’s shoes started going missing when he left them outside... maybe a month after we came.”
Within a year of living at the property, she began to recognise how potential thieves would check homes.
“Sometimes they just come and knock randomly and ask for someone [a random name]... to see if there is somebody in the house.
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“I’m not sure [why thieves target this area] maybe it’s because the houses are all close to each other.”
Beyond burglary, she had other concerns - she said the neighbours attract police attention regularly.
“We are looking for a place to move out to because we’ve had enough, we don’t feel safe.
“Every week there would be cops all around here.”
Or is it Tikipunga West in Whangārei?
While Takanini South experiences more burglary than other parts of New Zealand - are they actually the most burgled? Or do they top the list because of the way data is reported?
For starters, the data is imperfect. In total, 3284 burglaries were missing location information in the police data so were unable to be mapped.
Then - here’s where it gets tricky - the neighbourhoods used in this article are small areas StatsNZ calls meshblocks.
Meshblocks are designed to be roughly comparable to each other, with each containing around 30-60 dwellings. When additional houses are built in a meshblock it is split into new smaller meshblocks.
But police report the locations of burglaries using meshblock boundaries from 2013 - despite the fact means many of the neighbourhoods that top the burglary list have been split into additional meshblocks by StatsNZ over the last decade.
Dividing the number of burglaries in an area by the population in that area is one way of comparing neighbourhoods more fairly, but unfortunately population data isn’t available at this level. However, we can get a sense of population growth in neighbourhoods by taking into account newly-created meshblocks.
By this metric, a neighbourhood in Tikipunga West in Whangārei is the most burgled.
Try the more detailed methodology and search for your neighbourhood below.
Data source NZ police all Unlawful entry with Intent/Burglary, Break and Enter victimisations.
