Police strategy development: the New Zealand police prevention strategy

ABSTRACT

In 2009, the New Zealand Police implemented a comprehensive program called Policing Excellence, which by 2011 became Prevention First. This strategy was designed to place victims of crime and the prevention of crime at the foreground of their service delivery, with the view that in the longer-term crime would decrease. This article reviews the influence of the strategy on crime in New Zealand for the period 2009 to 2018 and finds that although the strategy was initially successful, in later years the strategy has not been as successful. The review also finds that the effectiveness of the New Zealand Police has decreased significantly during this period and argues for a more balanced strategy that includes an improved form of response to increase public satisfaction with the organization’s service delivery.

KEYWORDS:

• Prevention
• crime
• strategy
• New Zealand police

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All Crime statistics presented in this analysis were obtained from Statistics New Zealand www.statistics.govt.nz/and policedata.nz.

2. All figures per officer take into account the increase in sworn officers from 8774 in 2009 to 9806 in 2018.

3. Until 2015 offences were recorded by the New Zealand Police as two annual series – one for the calendar year ending December 31st (published around April), and one for the fiscal year ending June 30 (published around August). Beginning in 2015 the New Zealand police discontinued their statistical series on offences and initiated a new monthly statistical series on victimisations which meant that total offending is now not recorded.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Garth den Heyer

Dr Garth den Heyer is a lecturer in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University and a member of contributing faculty at Walden University. His research interests including, the development of police strategy, evidence-based policing, police militarization and countering terrorism.