Roger Brooking is a Wellington alcohol and drug counsellor who writes about the justice system.
THREE KEY FACTS
The Greens’ Tamatha Paul expressed “regret” about a claim she made on social media that the “vast majority” of people in prison are there for non-violent offences that they’ve “had to do as a response to poverty”.
Police and Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell described comments in her video as “total nonsense” and an “insult” to New Zealanders who have been victimised by those in prison.
A 2022 Justice Long-term Insights Briefing said “most people serving sentences in prison have been convicted of serious sexual or violent offending”.
It seems we like locking people up in New Zealand in a process that criminologist professor John Pratt describes as penal populism. In 2018, we had 214 people in prison per 100,000 of the population. The current rate is 187 prisoners per 100,000 – still notably higherthan Canada (90 per 100,000), Australia (163 per 100,000), and England (141 per 100,000).
As part of this populist process, there is a public perception that most of those in prison have committed sexual or violent crimes. This perception seems to be based, at least in part, on a Ministry of Justice document submitted to Parliament in 2022 called Long term Insights Briefing into Imprisonment in New Zealand 1960 to 2050. It says: “Most people serving sentences in prison have been convicted of serious sexual or violent offending. New Zealand prisons are not full of people on minor charges ... Most people in prison are there for serious crimes.”
The briefing is short on actual statistics, but has a graph which shows that in December 2022, about 55% of those in prison were there for serious violence or sexual violation.
But what does this really mean? A well-known saying attributed to Mark Twain states: “There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.” This points to the potential for statistical data to be misinterpreted to support a weak argument.
So what’s the weak argument? The claim that 55% of prisoners have committed sexual or violent offences is weak because it only applies to those in prison on a given day – in this case December 31, 2022. It’s a one-day snapshot. This statistic was used by Mark Mitchell to criticise and ridicule Green MP Tamatha Paul, who recently claimed that “the vast majority of people who are in prisons are there for non-violent offences”.
But this briefing was supposed to provide long-term insights. So let’s look at the criminal profiles of those sentenced to prison over a 12-month period.
Currently, the prison muster is just over 10,000. However, in any given year, around 20,000 New Zealanders spend time in prison and about 15,000 are released every year. This occurs because the majority of those sentenced to prison are given short sentences.
The reason these offenders receive short sentences is because their offending – such as shoplifting, theft, driving while disqualified, breaching court conditions etc – is not serious enough to warrant a long-term sentence. None of this involves interpersonal violence. Offenders given a sentence of two years or less are automatically released halfway through the sentence. That’s why there’s a high turnover.
Police and Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell. Photo / Marty Melville
The long-term briefing relies on statistics from the Corrections Department, which reports that about half of those currently in prison are serving long sentences for sexual and violent crimes – that’s about 5,000 inmates, 50% of the daily total, but only 25% of the 20,000 who spend time in prison each year.
So Tamatha Paul was on the right track. It may not be the “vast majority” as she claimed, but around 75% of those who end up in prison every year are there for non-violent crimes. That’s a substantial majority.
But these are broad-sweep statistics. I did a deeper dive for more specific data by making an Official Information Act (OIA) request to the Ministry of Justice, asking for a breakdown of the criminal profiles of every offender sentenced to prison in 2024. Those convicted of serious violence (murder, manslaughter and other acts intended to cause injury) made up 1.7% of the total; those convicted of aggravated sexual assault made up 6.3%. Adding these figures together means those sentenced to prison in 2024 for serious violence or aggravated sexual assault make up only 8% of those sentenced to prison that year.
However, the Ministry of Justice data distinguishes between “acts intended to cause injury” (serious), “common assault” and “assault not further defined” (less serious). It says 22% of prisoners were sentenced for the latter two offences. Adding the serious and less serious figures together, about 30% of those sentenced to prison in 2024 were convicted of violent or sexual offending. Turning that around: 70% of those sentenced to prison are there for non-violent offending. That’s still a substantial majority.
That’s still not the end of the story. What constitutes “less serious” violence? Here’s one example. Remember Daniel Fitzgerald?In 2018, he was sentenced to prison for seven years for indecent assault when he kissed a random womanin public. After more than four years inside, the case went to the Supreme Court which said his imprisonment went “well beyond excessive punishment and would shock the conscience of properly informed New Zealanders”. This travesty of justice occurred under the Three Strikes law – which wasintended to address serious violence.
How many of the 22% sentenced to prison for less serious violence might not be there if it weren’t for Three Strikes?
That would take another deep dive. But clearly, the pool of violent offenders is nowhere near as deep as Mark Mitchell and the Corrections Department would have us believe.
