Justice Minister defends release of provisional crime stats

3.00pm

Justice Minister Phil Goff today defended the Government's release of provisional crime statistics covering a 10-month period as opposition parties denounced the move.

National, ACT and New Zealand First are all campaigning for tougher policing and sentencing, and yesterday around 350 protesters marched on Parliament supporting those policies.

With law and order a main election issue, Police Minister George Hawkins yesterday rushed out provisional figures for the 10 months to April 30 which he said showed a 2.4 per cent drop in crime nationwide.

"Worst violent crimes are showing encouraging trends down," he said.

The provisional figures compared statistics for the same 10-month period the previous year but opposition parties accused the Government of releasing "shonky" figures.

"The official police figures are released publicly by the police twice a year. They are the official crime figures for New Zealand. These are not," ACT leader Richard Prebble said.

"They are trying to snow the voting public with shonky figures to try to allay the public's natural concern with the fact that violent crime is going through the roof in New Zealand," he said.

National's police spokesman Tony Ryall said the figures were "as close as you can get to being cooked".

"They are incomplete and that's why the police have never, ever released 10-month crime figures," he said.

Mr Ryall said senior officers he had spoken to had told him the full year violence figures should continue to show another increase.

According to Mr Hawkins' figures, violence was down 1.7 per cent, sexual offences down 10.8 per cent, drugs and anti-social crimes down 5.6 per cent, dishonesty including burglary down 2.5 per cent, property damage down 1.1 per cent and administrative crimes down 0.5 per cent.

Mr Hawkins said the results were encouraging but only provisional and two districts, Auckland and North Shore, had trended upwards.

Today, Mr Goff said on National Radio the full year statistics would not be available until after the election but the 10-month figures were being released "because in the mean time false claims of crime trends are being made".

"There is nothing cooked about them. They are the most up to date statistics."

However, that did not soothe Mr Ryall who said this was a "cynical" release made after Mr Goff had been criticised by marchers on the Sensible Sentencing Trust rally to Parliament grounds yesterday.

"Look, I've constantly asked for these month-by-month crime statistics from both the minister of police and the officials at the police department," Mr Ryall said on National Radio.

"I have always been told that I cannot have this information because it's incomplete, it's subject to substantial change and no conclusions can be drawn from anything other than the official police statistics which are released twice a year."

Mr Goff said the figures were much more reliable than the "absolute nonsense that's being spoken by National, ACT and on occasion New Zealand First".

"These are the figures produced by the police for the latest period for which they have them -- the latest 10 months. They are also consistent the previous year's figures, the final figures, that showed that crime was at a 13-year low, burglary at a 20-year low.

"What's different about these figures is that it shows that finally the trend in violent crime has turned around and that violent crime is also coming down."

The figures "put a lie to the claim of spiralling violence which is being used to generate a climate of fear by some of the opposition parties".

In a statement today, police said they would not be commenting on the statistics, given the political environment.

The next official police statistics on recorded crime and resolution rates would be released in late August.

- NZPA

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