Everyone's talking about youth crime. Retail theft, ram raids, violent offending. But here's what they're not telling you: the fastest-growing category of youth offending isn't what you think.

Police finalised charges against 1,245 young people for abduction, harassment and other offences against the person in 2024. (Source: Stats NZ, youth-finalised-charges)

That's the highest number in 13 years. You have to go back to 2011 to find anything comparable.

Five years ago, in 2019, that number was 807. It stayed flat through the first year of COVID: 804 in 2021. Then something changed. By 2022, it jumped to 1,146. Then 1,206 in 2023. Now 1,245.

That's a 54% increase in four years.

This category covers a wide range of offending: stalking, threatening behaviour, coercion, unlawful confinement. It's the type of crime that often happens between people who know each other. Online harassment that spills into the real world. Controlling behaviour in relationships. Threats serious enough that police press charges.

It's also the type of crime that doesn't get political speeches. Politicians talk about ram raids and retail theft because those stories play well on the evening news. But harassment and threatening behaviour? That's harder to turn into a soundbite.

Yet it's growing faster than almost any other youth crime category. While some forms of youth offending have plateaued or dropped, this one keeps climbing.

Part of that might be better reporting. Police take harassment more seriously than they used to, particularly online harassment and coercive control. Victims are more likely to come forward. That's progress.

But even accounting for that, the trajectory is stark. The number of young people charged with these offences has grown every single year since 2021.

These aren't statistics that make for easy policy. You can't fix harassment with tougher sentencing or more security guards in shops. This is about relationships, power, control, and increasingly, the internet.

What gets measured gets managed. What gets talked about gets funding. And right now, the political conversation about youth crime is focused almost entirely on property offences and violence.

Meanwhile, 1,245 young people were charged with harassment, stalking, threats and related offences last year. That number has been climbing for four years straight. And almost nobody's talking about it.