Offence: refers to any act or omission by a person/organisation or persons/organisations for which a penalty could be imposed by the New Zealand legal system. Offences in this collection are defined by the 2023 edition of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification (ANZSOC).
Offender: refers to a person or organisation Police apprehend because Police allege the person or organisation is involved in a criminal incident involving one or more offences.
Proceeding: refers to a legal action initiated against an alleged offender for an offence(s). Police proceedings represent a count for each separate occasion on which police initiate a legal action against an offender. Each proceeding is classified to a principal offence and principal method of proceeding. It does not represent a count of offences.
Proceeding population: the measure involving counting a person once on each day they are proceeded against by police in the reference period, whether by court or non-court action.
Caution should be observed when making inferences about long-term trends in crime, particularly for types of offences that are known to be significantly under-reported (e.g. Sexual offences and minor offences not warranting insurance claims or medical treatment).
Inclusions
substantive offences (e.g. robbery, breach of protection order);
attempted offences (e.g. attempted robbery).
aid and abet offences;
conspiracy offences.
The offenders include both people and organisations (for which age and sex are flagged ad 'Not applicable').
Exclusions
offences that Police are able to deal with by issuing an infringement notice
offences that come under the authority of agencies other than NZ Police, such as Customs, Worksafe New Zealand, Inland Revenue, ACC, Ministry for Primary Industries, etc.
At URL provided, select the 'Download' tab. Then select the period Jan 2017 to Dec 2025 on the slider and '5 Age Sex Boundary' at the bottom of the page.
Click on the 'Download' button in the bottom-right corner and then 'Data'.
A new page will open. Select the 'Full data' tab, tick the 'Show all columns' checkbox and select the 'Download all rows as a text file' hyperlink.
Due to the size of the file, Figure.NZ created summary pivot tables in Excel to be able to process aggregated figures.
From the dataset Recorded Crime Offenders Statistics: Offender Demographics (Proceedings) by age, sex, and boundary December 2025, this data was extracted:
This dataset presents descriptive information about offenders in New Zealand. It also gives an overview of trends in proceedings against offenders. These are proceedings reported during a relevant period.
Method of collection/Data provider
Data in the NZ RCVS collection relate to offences recorded by NZ Police as prescribed in the NZ Police National Recording Standard (NRS), where the matter came to Police attention (File Reported Date) on or after 1 July 2014.