SpeechHon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Probably the first thing I would like to state just on record is that—and it goes back to my primary answer when we commenced this debate and discussion this afternoon—police data shows that there has been a 37 percent increase in reporting of violent offending. That's not what we're seeing flow through the system in terms of additional uplift in terms of prosecutions but the reporting has increased. So we look to: why has the reporting increased? I mean people can make mockery of that but we've invested a lot of money and time and energy into enabling people to be able to report violent crime.The biggest and most substantive investment in this area as I discussed at the outset was with respect to violent offending within the family environment one of those types of crimes that tends to be—and has gone for far too long—under-reported and that's what was coming through from the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey. That was one area that was always substantively under-represented. As we've seen the level of reporting go up in violent crime in violent offending there is a direct correlation with the increase in reporting of family violent crime. So I guess just to go back to that start part that shows that the focus that we've had is working because we are getting further people engaging in reporting areas that have previously been under-reported.The number of people entering court for violent offences—again just for the record so that's correct—has increased by 8 percent since July 2022. If we come over to the decrease in the prison population—because the member's proposition is that violent offending is going up violent offenders in prison are going down; that's the simple proposition that the member has put to this committee. However the statistics don't reflect that. Most of the decrease in the prison population is for non-violent offences. Prison population by type of offending: if we look at it prison population has decreased by 21 percent over the last five years. There's been a larger decrease in the number of people in prison for non-violent offences—30 percent—than for violent offences over the past five years.So I guess when we are trying to draw apples and oranges I mean—and this is the challenge that we have to look at all of those drivers. What is causing the spikes that we're seeing? Is it substantively worse or better or what is the corollary from what we saw when we took office? We can see that substantive uplift in reporting and therefore prosecutions in that family violence environment because that was a commitment we as a Government made. We see less violent offenders in prison. There is simply a lack of evidence that prison is the best place for offenders who are less violent and therefore are there other ways that we as a society can invest in ensuring that those people and those individuals can make a more fulsome contribution and if so then what is the role of the State to enable that? Those are decisions that we have made where we have seen spikes—and I addressed this in the outset as well—particularly around areas like youth crime coming off the back of COVID. We saw those immeasurable jumps. It still doesn't get us back to where the crime levels were in 2017 but we certainly saw a jump. So we made interventions like I said through Better Pathways and others and we saw that reduction and restabilisation.So I guess what I can assure this House is that unlike the base sum that the member is putting to this House that there's more reporting and less violent offenders in the prison—that's simply not what the evidence is showing us.