While the Ministry of Justice warns about AI and deepfakes becoming problematic for courts, here's what's actually happening in those courtrooms: young people are barely showing up in them anymore.

Convictions of 17-to-19-year-olds dropped to 164,356 in 2024, the lowest figure since records began in 1980. (Source: Ministry of Justice, adults-convicted-by-sentence)

This isn't a blip. It's a 22% drop from 2020, when 209,672 young adults were convicted. The trajectory is clear: down, down, down.

Let's put this in context. In 1980, when New Zealand's population was 3.1 million, courts convicted 164,356 people aged 17 to 19. In 2024, with a population of 5.3 million, courts convicted exactly the same number. Per capita, youth crime convictions have collapsed.

The timing is brutal. Courts are considering mobile courthouses to improve access to justice in rural areas, presumably because they expect demand. Meanwhile, the pipeline of young offenders has never been thinner.

Here's the contrast nobody wants to acknowledge: politicians campaign on youth crime. Media reports breathlessly on ram raids and retail crime. Public perception says young people are out of control. The data says the opposite. Youth convictions are down 8% from last year alone, falling from 178,408 in 2023.

This creates a strange disconnect. The Justice system worries about deepfakes distorting evidence while ignoring that the public perception of youth crime is itself a distortion. The real story is in the courtroom logs, not the headlines.

Every year since 2020 has seen fewer young people convicted than the year before. That's four consecutive years of decline. You don't get that from random fluctuation. Something fundamental has shifted.

Maybe it's prevention programmes working. Maybe it's demographic change. Maybe it's policing practice. The Ministry of Justice hasn't told us, because apparently they're too busy contemplating AI-generated evidence to analyse the trend in their own conviction data.

What we know: courts are quieter. Young offenders are rarer. The 44-year record proves it. And yet the conversation about youth crime keeps getting louder, more urgent, more punitive.

The numbers and the narrative have never been further apart.