Editorial: Clearer picture on crime a must

Sometimes it's hard, between the political hyperbole and the government agency spin, to get a clear steer.

This week opposition parties claimed New Zealand Police would no longer release family violence statistics, prompting concern from organisations dealing with the fallout of domestic violence.

Police said they would still issue the figures but that they would now be collated according to international best practice.

Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Bush said a new reporting system would focus on capturing information about the relationship between a victim and an offender.

"People are charged with offences such as male assaults female, grievous assault, sexual assault, harassment and many others. All these offences can be 'family violence' but in some cases they are not because the crime doesn't involve people who have a relationship with one another," he said.

While political parties argue about whether this is an attempt to gloss over a lack of progress on domestic violence, let's remind ourselves of the end result of family violence: twins Cris and Cru Kahui, James Whakaruru, Coral-Ellen Burrows, sisters Olympia Jetson and Saliel Aplin and Rotorua's Nia Glassie.

While no one has been held accountable for the twins' deaths, the other four children are known to have died because of someone they considered family.

Every family violence death prompts a renewed determination to do something about our shameful record of deaths and torture in family situations. Look at the handwringing and reports from the Children's Commissioner after each death, celeb-heavy television campaigns telling us it's not okay to beat a partner or rule children through fear. We need to know these efforts are having an impact. If we don't know how bad it was yesterday, how can we be certain it's better today? We need the best quality information and a realignment with international best practice seems to offer that.

While it's frightening to think we'll be stumbling in the dark for a couple of years with no comparable benchmarks, if police know a better system exists we can't expect them to persevere with a lesser system. Anything that will give us a better picture of the safety of women and children must be worth it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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