This research seeks to inform policy work around the Gang Action Plan to reduce the harms caused by adult gangs in New Zealand. The report establishes baseline figures on how many known adult gang members, and how many of their children, come into contact with the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD’s) service arms, and the types and estimated total costs of contacts that occur.
The findings in this report are not implying that the gang members’ and their children’s contact with MSD service lines was due solely to their links to gangs.
As at July 2014, there were an estimated 3,960 adult gang members known to New Zealand Police (NZ Police). While these individuals were known to be adult gang members in mid-2014, they were not necessarily gang members at the time they had some of their contact with MSD service lines.
Limitations
The findings of this research were based on a probabilistic data match by Insights MSD between names and dates of birth held by NZ Police and those held by MSD. Inevitably this means that the data-match results, and therefore the subsequent findings, will have some degree of error.
There are limitations to Child, Youth and Family data discussed in the report body which mean that findings relating to “lifetime” contact rates and costs in particular are likely to be under-estimates and should be treated with some caution. To a much lesser extent, this is also true of the welfare assistance findings.
There was particular interest in identifying the children of gang members recorded in the MSD data, and measuring their levels of contact with MSD. While there were around 6,000 to 7,000 children linked to the gang members in the two MSD source systems examined, there is no way to know whether this was all of the gang members’ children. (From the Executive summary). Record #4930