Sentenced prisoners in New Zealand
By main offence, year ended June 2024, number of sentences started
| Main offence | Number of sentences |
|---|---|
| Homicide and related offences | 120 |
| Acts intended to cause injury | 1,533 |
| Sexual assault and related offences | 462 |
| Dangerous or negligent acts endangering persons | 57 |
| Abduction, harassment and other offences against the person | 312 |
| Robbery, extortion and related offences | 279 |
| Unlawful entry with intent/burglary, break and enter | 897 |
| Theft and related offences | 729 |
| Fraud, deception and related offences | 195 |
| Illicit drug offences | 366 |
| Prohibited and regulated weapons and explosives offences | 261 |
| Property damage and environmental pollution | 126 |
| Public order offences | 93 |
| Traffic and vehicle regulatory offences | 306 |
| Offences against justice procedures, security and govt operations | 1,128 |
| Miscellaneous offences | 21 |
Definitions
Sentence: A sentence is a punishment given by a judge. A prison sentence is the most punitive sentence a judge can impose. Some sentences such as home detention are designed to be both punitive and have a rehabilitative aspect to them.
Sentenced prisoner: People in prison for a custodial sentence. Sentenced prisoners are those convicted of a crime and sentenced to imprisonment.
Length of sentence: The length of sentence is the court-imposed length, and is recorded under the year that sentence was imposed. If an offender is paroled and then recalled, they are counted twice or more.
Data calculation/treatment
This data measures distinct sentence periods, not unique offenders, that is, the number of new sentence period starts within a financial year. If an offender starts more than one sentence period within a year then the offender is counted more than once.
A person is counted once for the most serious offence category for which they were prosecuted.
Information on the sex and ethnicity of an offender is recorded by Corrections. Age is calculated based on the birth date as collected by the prosecuting authority (mostly New Zealand Police) at the time a person is arrested or prosecuted.
The durations shown are court-imposed lengths and not actual time spent in prison.
A prison sentence that is subsequently cancelled on appeal is still included in these statistics, as the offender had spent the time in prison.
For more information
Data provided by
Dataset name
Prison and Community-Sentence Population: Annual Sentenced Prisoner Throughput for the latest Fiscal Years YE June 2024
Webpage:
How to find the data
Data is displayed at URL provided. To create this dataset, click on download and “unfiltered data in tabular text (CSV)”
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Prison and Community-Sentence Population: Annual Sentenced Prisoner Throughput for the latest Fiscal Years YE June 2024
From the dataset Prison and Community-Sentence Population: Annual Sentenced Prisoner Throughput for the latest Fiscal Years YE June 2024, this data was extracted:
- Rows: 2-151,631
- Column: 17
- Provided: 151,630 data points
This data forms the table Corrections - Annual sentenced prisoner throughput for Year ended June 1999–2024.
Dataset originally released on:
October 24, 2024
Method of collection/Data provider
The prison sentence data come from the Department of Corrections' data warehouse. From 1999, the data has been sourced from the Department of Corrections' Integrated Offender Management System (IOMS).