Justice Sector Projections

We produce the Justice Sector Projections on behalf of the justice sector. The projections are important for strategic planning within the sector. The Projections are updated and published every year: https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/research-data/justice-sector-projections/

Each year the Ministry of Justice looks at long-term trends to project what may occur across the criminal justice system over the next ten years. These projections cover several measures including the number of people coming into court, the number of people in prison, and how long people spend in prison. The projections are based on the latest data and system settings. They only include the impact of changes to legislation, policy and practice that have been formally approved, funded and have a clear implementation plan. Therefore, the projections represent only one possible future – not the future. The projections provide insight for future court resource and prison capacity planning. They also act as a catalyst for change and provide a baseline that can be used to assess the collective impacts of future policy, legislative and operational changes. Many sector initiatives currently being planned or tested by sector organisations have the potential to create a different future than the one projected here.

In the past we have also published projections/forecasts (also available on our website) for:

-Non-custodial sentences projections covering offenders serving community sentences, and those on post-sentence orders.

-Crown Law projections, covering the numbers of Crown prosecutions and appeals undertaken by Crown solicitors (under the oversight of the Solicitor-General) or lawyers from Crown Law.

-Fines and remittals projections, covering the numbers of impositions, receipts and remittals of monetary penalties to Community Work sentences.

-Legal aid projections, covering the numbers of grants, average costs, expenditure, and debt recovery for legal aid.