What happens when police lay a charge against someone and then quietly withdraw it?

In 2024, it happened 378,165 times. That's the highest number of withdrawn charges in 14 years. To find a comparable figure, you have to go back to 2010. (Source: Stats NZ, charges-by-offence-type)

More than a thousand cases, every single day, started by police and then abandoned before they reached a verdict.

The trajectory is stark. In 2021, withdrawals dropped to 274,665. Then they climbed: 301,815 in 2022, 340,197 in 2023, and now 378,165 in 2024. That's a 38% increase in three years.

When a charge is withdrawn, it means the prosecution decided not to proceed. Maybe the evidence collapsed. Maybe a witness disappeared. Maybe police laid the charge in haste and regretted it later. The data doesn't tell us which.

What it does tell us: the gap between charges laid and charges that actually stick is widening.

This matters because withdrawn charges still leave a mark. Someone arrested, processed, possibly held in custody, their name appearing in court documents. Then the case evaporates. No conviction, no acquittal, just a withdrawal.

For victims, it can mean justice promised and then snatched away. For defendants, it means weeks or months of legal limbo for nothing. For the system, it suggests either overzealous charging or under-resourced prosecution, or both.

The political conversation about crime rarely mentions this. Politicians talk about charges laid as if they're the same as convictions. They're not. Nearly 380,000 charges last year went nowhere.

You can argue this shows the system working: police laying charges when they suspect an offence, then prosecutors filtering out the weak cases. But 38% growth in three years doesn't suggest a steady filter. It suggests something shifting.

Are police under pressure to be seen acting on crime, even when the evidence is thin? Are prosecutors overwhelmed, triaging cases and dumping the marginal ones? Are witnesses refusing to cooperate at higher rates than before?

The data doesn't answer those questions. But it does show this: the number of charges being abandoned is climbing faster than almost any other metric in the justice system. And nobody's talking about it.