Victims advocate urges frontline investment after increasing violence statistics

The opposition says the government's approach on law and order will only lead to more crime, but a victims advocate says catching criminals is needed - along with more frontline support.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon either did not or could not put a timeframe on when he expects his government's law and order policies will start to reduce the number of crime victims.

The victims advocate, Ruth Money, says she would not expect to see an effect for the next 12 months.

It comes after the government's first report card on the nine public sector targets set in April showed two of the targets - for the self-identified priority areas of education and crime - were at risk of not being met.

The number of victims of violent crime were particularly striking, with the number increasing from 185,000 in October last year, to nearly 215,000 in June.

The increase of nearly 30,000 people reporting having been victims of violent crime in the previous 12 months was a stark reversal of the goal: 20,000 fewer victims by 2030.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced the results at the post-Cabinet media briefing on Monday, alongside Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith.

Goldsmith confirmed the coalition's intention to introduce sentencing laws would largely follow the approach campaigned on by the governing parties, but with the addition of two new aggravating factors put forward in Labour's Ram Raids bill, currently before select committee.

These would mean aiding or abetting children to offend or glorifying criminal activities by livestreaming or posting them online would come with harsher sentencing penalties.

Goldsmith said there was a "long lag" in the data, and the statistics reflected victims' perception of crimes which could date back two years.

Luxon blamed the previous Labour government, saying anti-gang and sentencing legislation was only just taking effect, and would need time to affect victimisation rates.

When asked when he would expect those changes to start bringing down the number of victims he did not or could not answer directly.

"Yeah, look, I mean, I've set these targets and the reason is yes, the targets are important in themselves, absolutely, but actually it's about the conversations that it's driving inside the public service and amongst the ministerial groups on these portfolios."

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said National had used one set of crime statistics - police data - when in opposition, but a different set when looking at its own record.

He said the government's adoption of two sentencing provisions is a good thing, but its approach is "all over the show" when it came to crime.

"I think they still haven't answered the fundamental question which is if putting more people in prison is a recipe for less crime, why is it we have one of the highest imprisonment rates in the OECD but we're dealing with more crime."

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was hesitant to directly link the rising number of victims to policies, but said there was ample evidence that tough-on-crime policies and a "shredding" of the social safety net would only increase intergenerational criminality.

She said it would lead to more crime, more victims, and ultimately more cost, and the evidence showed poverty and housing were key to tackling crime.

"If the government really cared about the state of housing people were living in, if it cared about people being on liveable incomes, its targets wouldn't be centred around kicking people out of emergency housing or off of a Jobseeker benefit," she said.

Money said the government was right its policies would take time to wash through, but warned a full suite of interventions and support would be needed.

"For me, I don't think anything is really going to start to turn around for at least another 12 months," she said.

"You can't just pull one lever without the other, so for example police and others need to be increased - absolutely - but so too, there's rehabilitation and reintegration, or we will just have a revolving door."

She said the previous Labour government had missed some opportunities to decrease victimisation or support, and she agreed the statistics reflected a soft-on-crime stance.

However, much more investment would be needed to truly tackle the problem.

"Unfortunately, the system needs a lot of investment and a lot of people - and they're two things that we don't have right now. There are so many things that need the attention but in terms of justice, it can't work in a silo. It needs to work with health, it needs to work with education, to name just a few.

"Things have been operating in silos, and humans are not, you know, machines. We absolutely need everything to work together, and that's what's not happening right now."

She said support services and police on the frontline were overwhelmed, and court wait times were blowing out.

"I can't get police to act on protection order breaches, for example, because they too are overwhelmed. So it does need significant investment and care, which we're just not feeling right now at the front line.

"It is difficult when victims are at the bottom of the cliff, they're literally at the bottom of the cliff. They are victimized, they are hurt. And while absolutely we need to stop the offending and we need to catch the offending, but meanwhile the victims are stuck in the middle waiting for investment and resources and rehabilitation so that they can get their lives back on track.

"We need to address the criminality, we need to address why people are offending. But when people are offending, we cannot forget the victims.

"We have to break the cycle of violence. Every report that's written over the last 30 years says exactly the same thing. Successive governments fail at this. For 30 years, the reports have said the same thing, and yet we keep doing the same thing, and expecting a different result."

She said family violence - something New Zealand had a particularly bad record for - was a key aspect of the cycle of violence that needed to be addressed.

"There is a call out every four minutes, and they are only to callouts for the police," she said. "It is a learned behavior and we can unlearn, but we can only unlearn with resources.

"If all we did - all we did - was address family violence, we would have a much more successful and much more humane community and society. We would stop so much of the cycle of violence if we were genuine in our efforts of changing the family violence landscape in New Zealand."