Youth Abduction and Harassment Charges Just Hit a 13-Year High
Police charged young people with 1,245 abduction and harassment offences in 2024, the highest number since 2011. The jump happened fast: four years ago, the figure was less than two-thirds of that.
Key Figures
Everyone talks about youth crime like it's out of control across the board. But here's what they're not telling you: while some categories are falling, one type of offence has quietly climbed to levels we haven't seen in over a decade.
1,245 young people were charged with abduction, harassment, and related offences against the person in 2024. That's the highest figure since 2011, when it hit 1,217. (Source: Stats NZ, youth-finalised-charges)
This isn't a statistical blip. In 2020, the number was 807. By 2022, it jumped to 1,146. Then 1,206 in 2023. Now 1,245. That's a 54% increase in four years.
What counts here? This category includes abduction, kidnapping, deprivation of liberty, criminal harassment, threatening behaviour, and intimidation. It's the crime of making someone feel unsafe, of controlling their movements, of digital threats that follow them everywhere.
The timing matters. These four years cover the rise of social media harassment turning into real-world threats, the post-lockdown spike in youth mental health crises, and a generation growing up with smartphones as their primary way of resolving conflict.
And yet, while politicians argue over whether youth crime is rising or falling, they're looking at totals. They're missing this: some types of youth offending are genuinely getting worse, even as others improve. This is one of them.
The 2024 figure represents roughly three young people charged every single day with these offences. That's three families, three sets of victims, three interventions by police and courts. Every single day.
This is not about being soft on crime or tough on crime. It's about seeing what's actually happening. Youth burglary is down. Youth theft is down. But youth harassment and related offences? They're at a 13-year peak, and climbing.
The question isn't whether youth crime is up or down. The question is: which crimes are changing, and what does that tell us about what young people are dealing with right now?
The data says harassment is the answer. And nobody's talking about it.
This story was generated by AI from publicly available government data. Verify figures from the original source before citing.