A senior officer then considers whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain a charge in court and if so, whether it is in the public interest to proceed. If it is deemed to not be of a sufficient scale to proceed, the offender is formally warned.
Keeping low-level offending out of the court system has positives about it.
We all know that our judicial system is straining under the weight of numbers.
It is not unusual for a high-profile case to take up to 18 months to get through to the trial stage, leaving offenders and victims and their families many months of agonising wait for an outcome that will hopefully allow them to get on with their lives.
These serious cases deserve the priority they are not currently getting and if freeing up the courts from low-level offenders helps in getting them a speedy progression, we should be grateful.
But as Ken Evans, spokesman for the Tauranga branch of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, points out we have to approach this with a degree of caution.
History tells us that taking a too passive approach to wrongdoing can be counter-productive.
The diversion scheme that was the main option for low-level offending offered the opportunity to send a short, sharp shock to young emerging offenders about the realities of the justice system.
They were given a message that if we see you back in the system again, the consequences of your actions are likely to be more severe.
I'm sure we would all like to think that such a warning would help correct the bad ways of at least some of these young offenders.
Mr Evans quotes the New York approach of giving young offenders serious time at the police station, charging them and giving them a real fright.
So while this pre-charge warning system has huge potential to reduce the workload on our courts, it cannot be done at the expense of the deterrent factor the courts offer.
We need to monitor the early success of this system in terms of re-offending by those who get off with just a warning.
Reduced numbers is not enough, it also must succeed.
