Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller
The police say they are focused on reducing the amount of time people spend on remand, not letting more defendants out on bail.
They are spending more than $60m bolstering their prosecutions unit with 100 more people, and on improving frontline operations under a programme dubbed ReFrame.
Police said better investigations had many benefits, one of which was speeding up court cases so time spent on remand waiting for trial or sentencing would drop.
However, they also told the government in March: "Fewer people on remand necessarily means more perpetrators remaining in the community, with greater demand on police response to risk escalation or incidents. Volumes have not yet been predicted for this."
"The worm has turned... it's not getting worse and that's the first step" - Police Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming
Morning Report asked Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming on Friday if there was any suggestion of police opposing bail less often.
"Absolutely not," he said. "So what the briefing that raised this point said is that police is concerned about the amount of time spent on remand."
In a statement, they doubled down: "Police has and will continue to oppose the granting of bail where there are concerns with respect to reoffending or community sentencing that support an opposition to bail. There is no change in approach in this respect."
However, they added they were working with justice sector partners "to reduce the number of defendants on remand in custody", too.
A table from a Police briefing to government on the ReFrame project. Photo: Supplied
McSkimming said the number on remand could not just keep going up.
"The important thing to understand is that there's only so many places in the prison, and if we don't make this [process] as effective and efficient as possible, there will come a time when there's no room to put those risky people. That's what we're trying to avoid."
The justice sector's joint efforts were paying off - "the worm has turned... it's not getting worse and that's the first step" towards getting back to the levels of remand seen in 2017-18, he said.
Police's own ministerial briefings mentioned predicting the "volumes" of "perpetrators" in the community, but police told RNZ that was a matter for the Ministry of Justice.
Elsewhere, the ministry said its efforts to cut time spent in custody included better bail support services in courts in recent years.
"People who engage with the service are more likely to achieve bail, and less likely to breach their conditions or reoffend," it said.
The police said their focus was less on people in custody awaiting trial, and more on speeding things up for those who had been convicted and awaited sentencing (this latter group makes up about a third of the remand population of 3500).
"Sentencing these defendants enables these people to move into the general prison population, where they can access rehabilitative programmes, or to be released if their sentence outcome means time served completes their sentence."