13 April 2021
G Sharma (FYI)
[FYI request #14649 email]
REF: IR-01-21-11828
Dear G Sharma,
Thank you for your email regarding the absence of demographic information in
our Police Safety Order (PSO) statistics.
In response, it is important to understand that New Zealand Police was using a
different reporting tool following the introduction of Police Safety Orders (PSOs)
in July 2010. During 2011 an evaluation was commissioned to assess the impact
PSOs were having. While this report did include demographic information, a
significant amount of manual collation was required to link and integrate data
existing in disparate tables to produce these statistics.
Since 2014, New Zealand Police has relied upon a different reporting tool to
produce its official statistics with the older data sources used for official reporting
last updated in December 2014. The shift in reporting tools has required newer
datasets to be built; however, at present the PSO datasets only contain
information on the number issued, the number breached, and the Police
boundary in which these events occurred.
New Zealand Police is continually developing newer datasets, demographic
information, as it relates to PSOs, remains unavailable via a singular source, and
requires significant collation to produce such statistics. Plans are underway to
build a fuller PSO dataset that contains this information, though given the high
level of quality and assurance required in development work, I cannot provide a
firm timeline on when this wil be implemented.
I trust this clarifies your question.
Yours sincerely,