New Zealand's crime rate seems terrible...

Question

The NZ government promote the country to would be immigrants as if it's some crime free paradise. I've heard all about how what an idyllic place to live New Zealand is, but I decided to read some crime reports from various New Zealand newspaper's websites and the crime rate and types of crime perpretrated sounds like what you'd find in America, and this is a country of 4 million people, not 300 million.

Really violent attacks in New Zealand seem to happen as frequently as they would in a country with a large population. From what I've read, only in the past week or two there has been;

A McDonalds manager held at gunpoint, at peak time, when the place was full of customers, by an unmasked man demanding money.

A Vietnamese student kidnapped when he got off a bus in Auckland, mugged, and then taken to a house a beaten up.

A man was stabbed in broad daylight in busy Aotea Square, in Auckland

A female estate agent was beaten up and robbed by a man she showed around a property.

There's been several drive-by shootings.

That's only a selection of the crimes that have recently taken place in New Zealand, and it seems the frequency and violence of the crimes are similar to what you'd find in a country of 100 million, and we're talking a small country of 4 million people here.

Per capita, New Zealand seems to have a h**l of a lot of scumbags in it's population, and all in all, it sounds a bit of a dump. I can see why the smart New Zealanders have left for Australia.

Answer 1

Hmm, I'm beginning to see your point.

Maybe you really should stay away from a place as dangerous as that...

;-)

For all those in the terrible predicament of having to exist here, comfort yourselves with the high police reporting rate of New Zealand, which is the highest in the world and effectively means that NZ's crime rates are really comparable to those of Germany, a supremely safe place.

Don't you go believing in statistics, unless you've made up the data yourself.

Answer 2

Hello. There has been so many people who have New Zealand and headed to Aussie and they just do fruit picking. There are alot of gangs and gang fights over there. That is what New Zealand live on is there gangs so that is a part of them. I live in Qld and i am glad i am not over there. I got told it is a beautiful place but you have to be careful as well. Take care and keep smiling...

Answer 3

New Zealand has a violent crime rate that is 10 times greater than New York City!  The place is crime ridden and out of control.

Answer 4

****************************** Check out the answers to this question, you'll find a much truer version of New Zealand is created http://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind...

as for sweneysteves answer, your from the united states and your saying NZ is worse than your country!!?? you've got to be kidding!! and where are your statistics proving your random claim that NZ's crime rate is 10 times that of new york city? at least people from other countries don't hate New Zealanders

AND In australia a man shot his partner in a carpark outside a suburban railway station

not to mention the horrific child molestation case just a few months ago.

well statistics count for something do they not??? why do you

keep asking so many questions about NZ? you've obviously decided to stay in the UK with its dismal weather and higher crime rate than NZ so our crime rate is not your concern surely?

the smartest NZers choose to stay in NZ away from all the poisonous snakes, toads and spiders, not to mention the huge bugs!!

some links you might like to check out:

granted these figures might not include every recent event, but that goes for all the countries mentioned

BUT Australia is ranked higher (worse) on EVERY one of these reports regarding safety, murders, rapes and other crimes. not only that but even Switzerland (supposedly the safest country in the world) ranks higher than New Zealand

Australia has the highest per capita rate of burglaries (out of 55 countries!)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bu...

surprise surprise its also number ! in the list of number of car thefts per capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ca...

its also worse than NZ regarding gun violence and homicides

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_gu...

manslaughters per capita Australia is number 11 in the list

whilst NZ is down at number 32

and murders PER CAPITA Austrlia number 43, NEW Zealand number 52

RAPES PER CAPITA AUSTRALIA = number 3!!!!!! New Zealand number 12

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ra...

I'm angry that despite the fact many many countries (UK, America, and Australia to name but a few) still have far higher crime and murder rates than NZ yet people are becoming obsessed that we are an "unsafe" country. its precisely because NZ is such a small country that all these crimes you've listed above are talked about, the media has a field day when any murders, shooting or the like do occur because we have two 1 hour slots worth of news to fill on 2 different channels daily, the amount of times a day these sorts of things happen in america, is too numerous to fill the daily news with

I for one have certainly not been the victim of a violent crime in NZ and i've lived here 24 years in various cities. when i was in Australia (Sydney) on holiday though, we had 2 appartment rooms between family in the place we were staying, one afternoon the door to the room myself and my nan were sharing was ajar whilst we were all lingering in the other room (right next door) i popped back out to our room and found a man in there about to steal our stuff he looked up and said "oh sorry wrong room" - nothing like that has ever happened to me in NZ.

so just saying it goes both ways and crime is all relative, you can't just go labelling whole countries "unsafe" because of the actions of a few...