Total children and young people charged in court in New Zealand
1993–2025, number of young people
| Year | Number of young people |
|---|---|
| 1993 | 3,138 |
| 2016 | 1,989 |
| 2005 | 4,599 |
| 2017 | 1,881 |
| 2004 | 4,632 |
| 2008 | 4,947 |
| 2014 | 2,079 |
| 2020 | 1,578 |
| 2019 | 1,503 |
| 1995 | 3,699 |
| 2003 | 4,419 |
| 2001 | 4,191 |
| 1998 | 4,077 |
| 2006 | 4,935 |
| 2011 | 3,594 |
| 1999 | 4,071 |
| 2010 | 3,954 |
| 2022 | 1,416 |
| 2000 | 4,164 |
| 2021 | 1,332 |
| 2012 | 3,033 |
| 2009 | 4,533 |
| 2024 | 1,692 |
| 1996 | 3,726 |
| 2002 | 4,164 |
| 2007 | 5,070 |
| 2013 | 2,499 |
| 1997 | 3,912 |
| 2015 | 1,875 |
| 2023 | 1,668 |
| 2018 | 1,632 |
| 1994 | 3,261 |
| 2025 | 1,599 |
Definitions
Prosecution outcome: it refers to the result of a charge laid in court.
Most serious offence: the one with the most severe sentence, measured by its sentence type and magnitude.
Data calculation/treatment
A modified version of Stats NZ's method of base 3 random rounding has been applied to protect the confidentiality of individuals. In the standard version, all counts are randomly rounded up or down to one of the adjoining multiples of 3 (eg. a count of 5 would be displayed as either 3 or 6, and a count of 1 would be displayed as either 0 or 3). In the modified version, 1s and 2s are always rounded up to 3. Only zero counts are displayed as 0.
For more information
Limitations of the data
Measures of ethnicity can be influenced by the context in which they are collected. Assigning ethnicity can be subjective or alleged offenders may not want to provide this information to Police.
This data only shows the most serious offence per person per year. Where a person has more than one offence in a year, the data shown (e.g. offence group, outcome, sentence) relates to the most serious offence.
For example: out of approx 6000 people charged with illicit drug offences in 2016 only half had illicit drug offences as their most serious offence. Using data counting the most serious offence in isolation therefore results in an undercount of the number of people charged with illicit drug offences.
Note: the size of undercounts varies depending on the offence group.
Changes to data collection/processing
From July 2025 the revision to categorise offences in the reporting of criminal justice data (ANZSOC v2.0.0) was implemented.
From October 2010, offenders aged 12 or 13 years may be sent to the Youth, District, or High Court, so these offenders are also included in this data from this date onwards.
From July 2019, 17-year-olds were included in the definition of children and youth.
Data provided by
Dataset name
Criminal Conviction and Sentencing Statistics: Children and young people charged in court 2025
Webpage:
How to find the data
Data is displayed at URL provided. To replicate the dataset used here, go to Customise -> Selection and select all variables. To download select 'Export' and choose desired download format.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Criminal Conviction and Sentencing Statistics: Children and young people charged in court 2025
From the dataset Criminal Conviction and Sentencing Statistics: Children and young people charged in court 2025, this data was extracted:
- Rows: 2-152,418
- Column: 17
- Provided: 152,417 data points
This data forms the table Crime - Children and young people charged in court 1992–2025.
Dataset originally released on:
March 17, 2026
About this dataset
This data contains the counts of children and young people prosecuted in criminal court during a calendar year for the most serious offence category for which they were prosecuted.
Method of collection/Data provider
The tables available here contain data from the Ministry of Justice's, statistical reporting datasets. The data were sourced from the courts' operational data systems. The Law Enforcement System (formally known as the Wanganui Computer and used by justice agencies from the late 1970s until 2005) was used as the source of these data up to 2003. From 2004, the data have been sourced from the Ministry of Justice’s Case Management System (CMS). From 29 April 2016, Stats NZ sourced courts data from the new Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), rather than the justice sector data warehouse (ISIS) used over recent years. Changes in data processing may cause small differences if you compare current output with similar results produced before 29 April.