Everyone assumes criminal convictions work the same way they always have: you get charged, you're found guilty, you get a conviction. That's how the justice system is supposed to work.

Except it's not how it's working anymore. In 2024, judges granted discharge without conviction to 53,004 people. That's the highest number in 17 years. Four years earlier, in 2020, that figure was 32,301. The number has nearly doubled.

Discharge without conviction is meant to be rare. It's the legal off-ramp for when a conviction would be disproportionately harsh: the promising medical student caught with drugs, the young professional who made one terrible mistake. The law says it should only happen when the direct and indirect consequences of a conviction would outweigh the seriousness of the offence.

But something changed after 2020. The numbers tell a story nobody in the justice system is willing to say out loud: what was once exceptional has become routine.(Source: Stats NZ, charges-by-offence-type)

In 2021, discharges without conviction dropped slightly to 29,805. Then they climbed: 35,124 in 2022, 44,334 in 2023, and now 53,004 in 2024. That's a 78% increase in just four years.

This isn't about one judge or one region. This is systemic. Across New Zealand, judges are increasingly deciding that people who plead guilty or are found guilty shouldn't have to carry the consequence of a criminal record.

Maybe that's the right call. Maybe we've decided as a society that convictions do more harm than good, that they block people from jobs and travel and second chances in ways that don't match the crime. But if that's the shift we're making, someone should probably say it out loud.

Because right now, the law still says discharge without conviction is supposed to be the exception. The data says it's becoming the norm. And the gap between those two things is where 53,000 people a year are finding themselves: guilty in the eyes of the court, but walking away with no conviction on their record.

Nobody's explaining why the threshold shifted so dramatically after 2020. Nobody's asking whether this is policy or just practice creeping forward case by case. And nobody's questioning whether a system that discharges 53,000 people without conviction in a single year is still functioning the way it was designed to.

The only thing we know for sure is this: if you're charged with a crime in New Zealand today, your chances of avoiding a conviction are higher than they've been in nearly two decades. Whether that's justice or just judicial drift depends entirely on who you ask.