Police believe almost 900 people joined a gang this year, a 13 percent increase on the year before.
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Police data shows they have identified a little over 7000 people as belonging to a gang, although the number is likely higher.
This is a 13 percent increase on the year before.
Notably a number of gang members with New Zealand ties have been deported from Australia, known as 501s referring to the legislation underpinning the deportations.
Local chapters have sprung up of the Mongols, Bandidos and the Comancheros.
Detective Sergeant Ray Sunkel said the Australian imports are harder and bring a more violent mindset.
Following arrests targeting the Mongols motorbike gang in Bay of Plenty earlier this year, community advocate and lifetime Black Power member Dennis O'Reilly said that gangs like the Mongols, established by people deported from Australia, operated on an entirely different basis to the gangs New Zealanders were accustomed to seeing.
"They're all New Zealanders by dint of having been exported here under 501, but they're not playing the game," he said.
Police have admitted they are facing challenges in fighting organised crime and gangs.
Earlier this year Detective Superintendant Greg Williams of the National Organised Crime Group told Morning Report there had been "a general arming up by the gangs" over the last three or four years, as well as a number of gangs increasing in size.
In the last year, police have sought to disrupt gangs by seizing $230 million of assets and laying money laundering charges against 118 gang members.
Call for appropriate policies
A gang culture researcher says the establishment of overseas gangs, drugs and Australian deportees have contributed to the growth of gang members in New Zealand.
Director of criminal justice at the University of Canterbury, Jarrod Gilbert, says though the figures might be inaccurate - ex-members can still be classified as belonging to a gang - there is growth in the numbers joining.
"If you start to put precision on it, and you start to use these quite big numbers then the public quite rightly goes: 'well, hang on a second, what's being done here?' and then they start to put pressure on the government and the government responds with policies that may not be fit for purpose because the problems have not been been properly defined."
Gilbert says social policies are needed to tackle the gang issue.