this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Yes and no. Overall the murder rate is going down (barring 15 March 2019): https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/crime-rate-statistics
There's more recent years in this PDF: https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/historic-new-zealand-murder-offences-1926-2021.pdf
So we get 10-11 murders per 1 million population. This is half what it was in the 90s.
However, there has been a recent violent crime increase. This is also not unexpected, as Labour has a policy of reducing the prison population. Putting less people in prison has longer term societal benefits but you can imagine it would lead to shorter term increases in violent crime, which does appear to be the case: https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/the-whole-truth/130965380/the-whole-truth-has-violent-crime-gone-up-under-labour
It does suggest rehabilitation isn't working though (assuming any increase is actually mostly from people who were previously convicted).
That said, crime stats seem to be so fraught, it's really hard to tell what's going on with any degree of precision
There's a lot to be said for having something in place to prevent the need for prison and rehab in the first place.
Not necessarily. If you have a 50% recidivism rate but hold less people in prison, crime rates will go up even if the rate doesn't change, simply because there are more people out of prison. Even if the recidivism rate goes down you may have more crime. But if over time the lower recidivism rate means less people go back to prison, over time you should see overall crime drop. This is probably a generatonal time period though. Short term higher crime rates for longer term gain.
That link you posted shows a giant spike and it being the highest its been since the 90s
Yes, that giant spike is in 2019 with the March 15 terror attacks. It goes back to the normal line in 2020 as shown in the PDF.