Police jump to defence of warnings system

Ken Evans says Sensible Sentencing Trust Tauranga might suggest a check by an independent body.

More than 4000 pre-charge warnings have been issued by Western Bay of Plenty police in the past five years, with the number on the rise each year since 2012.

Pre-charge warnings were introduced in late 2010 to reduce the burden on courts and the justice system, but a Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman hoped the warnings were not being used to skew crime statistics.

Since their introduction and up until July 2015, 4436 pre-charge warnings have been issued in the Western Bay policing district.

Western Bay Police acting area commander Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair

Most of the pre-charge warnings were issued for public order offences, with 2956 warnings issued, followed by theft at 637 warnings.

Western Bay Police acting area commander Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair said pre-charge warnings were used when a person was arrested for an offence punishable by less than six months imprisonment and did not meet the "public interest" test to put them before the court. "As you can see from the statistics the majority of warnings are given for low-level public order offences, often involving alcohol and at times of the night where police calls for service are very high.

"In these cases, the circumstances dictate that police need to intervene and make an arrest to defuse a potentially violent situation but it is not in the public interest for the charge to be put before the court.

"In other words, the intervention at the time is enough to prevent further offending and the advantage is that police can be back on the street very quickly or for longer periods in order to prevent other crime."

Crimes where the offender received a pre-charge warning were also recorded in the annual crime statistics, he said.

Sensible Sentencing Trust Tauranga spokesman Ken Evans said the number off warnings issued seemed high.

"There's a lot of crime that is accruing that is being dealt with under this warning system.

"The important thing is that police are using this new system correctly."

Mr Evans said it was important that crimes that should go to court went to court, although he could see the sense in preventing small misdemeanours clogging up the court system.

"Sensible Sentencing Trust would ask, is there an independent body to check that this law is being used as it was designed?"

The number of people being granted diversion or a discharge without conviction had been dropping since the introduction of pre-charge warnings in 2010.

There were 966 adults granted diversion or a discharge without conviction in 2010, compared with 84 last year.

Pre-charge warnings

A pre-charge warning is a formal warning given after arrest for a comparatively minor offence. This differs from traditional, more informal warnings given in the field, where the offender is not arrested, and the more formal adult diversion process, which is an outcome of prosecution following a court hearing.

- NZ Police