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Te Raranga (The Weave)

Following the unprecedented terrorist attack on Christchurch Masjidain on 15 March 2019, the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCOI) into the attack was established, and its report was publicly released on 8 December 2020. The Commission made 44 recommendations to eradicate violent extremism and foster a truly inclusive society for people from every culture, faith, and background.

Recommendation 42 of the report directs New Zealand Police to revise how we train frontline staff to recognise and record hate-motivated offending, in a way which facilitates the later use of section 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2002. In response to Recommendation 42, Cabinet mandated and funded a four-year programme of work – Te Raranga. Funding for this work commenced in July 2021, and totals $10.4 million over four years.

  • For more information on the RCOI and its report, click here.
     
  • Statement - Reviewing Police’s management, training and understanding of hate incidents, click here.

About Te Raranga

Te Raranga is a partnering programme that weaves people, whānau, agencies, and communities together to reduce the harm caused by hate in Aotearoa.

Led by Deputy Chief Executive, Pieri Munro, Te Raranga is focused on the development of resources to:

  • support victims, witnesses, and communities to recognise and report hate-motivated offences
  • align partner agencies to work towards reducing the harm caused by hate
  • train police staff to recognise, and record hate-motivated offences if it occurs.

Te Raranga developed new training and a toolkit of resources to better enable staff to recognise, record, respond to and resolve hate-motivated crime. The training has been delivered to all new recruits at the Royal New Zealand Police College since November 2022.

Te Raranga has also developed a number of training resources to support existing staff. Police staff have been appointed nation-wide to champion and support training. Elements of this training have been compulsory for all existing Public Safety Team staff since mid-2024. Overall staff feedback has been very positive.

Hate-Motivated Crime

Definition of hate-motivated crime

There is no specific offence called ‘hate crime’ in New Zealand law

However, several pieces of legislation are relevant to this topic:

  • s 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2002 makes hate-motivation n aggravating feature of any offence if it is partly or wholly committed because of hostility towards a group of persons who have an enduring common characteristic such as race, colour, nationality, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability.
  • s 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1981 makes it an offence to use, in a public place, any words intended to threaten, alarm, insult or offend (acknowledging high threshold Courts have applied);
  • s 131 of the Human Rights Act 1993 makes it an offence to publish or use words in any public place which are threatening, abusive or insulting, with intent to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule, any group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group of persons (requires Attorney General consent to prosecute);
  • s 8 of the Harassment Act 1997 makes it an offence to harass another person with intent to cause that person to fear for their safety;
  • s 22 of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 makes it an offence to post a digital communication with intent to cause harm to the victim (in certain circumstances).

Police is focused on hate-motivated offending

New Zealand Police’s working definition of hate-motivated crime is any offence which is motivated wholly, or in part, by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s particular characteristic, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or age. Subsection 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2002 guides this definition. The rest of s 9(1) provides the full list of aggravating factors in sentencing.

Aggravating factors are important because, alongside a range of other important principles and factors (including the mitigating factors listed in s 9(2)), they help the judge decide an appropriate sentence for each offender and their crime/s. If applicable to the case, an aggravating factor may increase an offender’s sentence.

For a hate-motivated crime to have occurred, two things must have happened:

  1. a crime has been committed (for example assault, damage to property, or threatening behaviour)
  2. a reason the crime was committed is because of hate/hostility (bias or prejudice) towards the victim’s race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, age or any other part of their identity.

This means perceived hate-motivation is not an offence on its own and would not be a reason for arrest, a crime must first have been committed. For example, expressing an opinion against migrant communities is not an offence and would not justify arrest, but expressing that opinion while vandalising a migrant-owned supermarket would necessitate arrest for the crime (vandalism), which would then be flagged for potential hate-motivation.

Police recording of hate-motivated crime

All reports made to New Zealand Police are recorded as an ‘occurrence’ in the National Intelligence Application (NIA). An occurrence within NIA is Police’s core measure and describes a report to Police, or by Police, that has occurred in the same place, at the same time.

The public may report something that, although concerning to that individual, does not break the law. It is the role of Police to consider the facts and determine if and what offence has occurred. If it is decided that what has happened is not an offence, it is recorded as such in NIA. Like with all reporting, Police also assesses whether the reporting person’s perception is reasonable – for example, not irrational, trivial, or malicious.

An occurrence within NIA may have one or more offences associated with it. For example, an occurrence where an offender punches a victim (assault) and steals their bag (theft) would be counted as one occurrence with two offences. Each offence within an occurrence can be flagged as ‘perceived hate’ if Police’s definition of a hate-motivated crime applies.

The ‘perceived hate’ flag is applied to occurrences rather than to a person’s NIA profile. When viewing a NIA profile there is no ‘perceived hate’ flag visible. The flag is only found when reviewing a relevant occurrence.

For each offence flagged as ‘perceived hate’, Police requires the capture of the ‘protected characteristic’ targeted. Where the circumstances of an offence indicate that multiple ‘protected characteristics’ were targeted, Police can record multiple ‘protected characteristics’ against each offence. Police captures groups/identities targeted as ‘Perceived Prejudices’ which are specific sub-categories (sub-Types) to our six ‘Protected Characteristic’ (Type) groupings. Capability to record at this level was added to NIA in July 2022, and the Hate Crime Quality Assurance Team (HCQAT) back-captured the data to 1 January 2022.

Within NIA, there are multiple flags that can be included on an occurrence, including ‘perceived hate’.

Note that:

  • Police records all reported hate-motivated crimes. This means if the reporting person believes that a crime was motivated by bias or prejudice, it may be flagged in Police’s system as ‘perceived hate’. 
  • The ‘perceived hate’ flag does not mean that hate-motivation has been proven. It means that from someone’s point of view, the event was targeting someone’s identity.
  • Recording this information recognises the need to look for material which could provide evidence of motivation, as well as material relating to the underlying crime.
  • Gathering material which may be evidence of motivation will also help to identify appropriate support for victims, and actions needed to prevent community tensions escalating.  
  • Investigation or subsequent court proceedings (with consideration of s 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2002) may determine whether hate is confirmed as a motivation for the offence.

Further information on all Police recording practices is available in the National Recording Standard.

Regular quality assurance activities occur to check that recording is consistent with the National Recording Standard. That activity is managed by the Hate Crime Quality Assurance Team (HCQAT) who are based in Police’s Assurance Group – working in conjunction with key stakeholders in Districts and Service Centres.

Police recording of non-criminal hate-motivated incidents

The RCOI considered the extent to which Police, through intelligence collection, might have been able to identify and intervene with the offender before the attacks. Part of this considered whether any of the offender’s online comments ought to have been captured and pieced together with other information about his activities. National security is one of Police’s statutory functions and intelligence collection (within reasonable bounds) is a critical component of Police discharging this function.

It has long been the case that Police responds to and works to resolve situations of tension that fall short of criminal offending. Doing so is an important part of good community policing and improves perceptions of safety along with improving trust and confidence in Police. It is also normal practice for police staff to make a business record of those interactions, including the circumstances of such a response and the resolution reached.

Where Police receives a report of or responds to an incident that does not rise to the level of an offence, but there is perceived hate-motivation, Police may record this in NIA as an incident flagged for ‘perceived hate’.

NZ Police is committed to continuous improvement to ensure our policies are consistent with the law and best policing practice.

Following an internal review of Te Raranga training and associated policies, Police is actively working to strengthen the threshold for the recording of non-criminal hate-motivated incidents.

The review and remedial actions will be published by the end of October 2024.

Te Raranga Advisory Group

New Zealand Police is one agency in a multi-agency approach to stand together against hate-motivated offending. Te Raranga leads the Te Raranga Advisory Group (TRAG) to strengthen work at the government and agency level. Confirmed TRAG members include the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, Netsafe, Te Tari Taiwhenua | Internal Affairs, Crime Stoppers, and CertNZ.

Improving our Response to Hate Crime – Report

Following the March 15 terror attack on Christchurch masjidain, Police engaged with communities to better understand the incidence and impact of hate crime in Aotearoa. The Evidence Based Policing Centre (EBPC) report provides an overview of people’s views and ideas. The Action plan is a summary of the report.

FAQs

What is Police’s training for hate-motivated crime, and can I have the training materials?

Police’s training enables staff to recognise, record, respond to and resolve hate-motivated offending.

The images and scenarios used in training are real examples of what has been reported to Police. These examples include reports of criminal acts as well as examples of free speech, to differentiate the two and highlight a complex area for our officers. They do not intend to label or categorise any group or individual in New Zealand as causing or being the victims of hate-motivated crime. 

Police acknowledges that some people have viewed the images used in the training as a negative depiction of certain groups in New Zealand, which was not the intent of this resource. Police has since refined and removed some images in response to this feedback.

Police is constantly reviewing and updating training in response to the needs of our communities. Where training materials have been changed from their original version, we have included both the current training material and either a copy of the original or a full list of edits made.

Current training materials are available below. Note that because training materials include real stories and images of real people some edits have been made and some resources withheld in order to protect individual privacy. Additionally note that Police would usually not release this type of training material as standard practice, however we are making an exception in this case due to public misunderstanding of Police’s approach to hate-motivated offending.

Videos

One-pagers

Scenarios

I have heard that Police has a ‘Hate Hub’ – is that true?

No. Police has received several requests under the Official Information Act 1982 asking about the existence, design, and/or installation of a team, unit, and/or database officially or unofficially named the ‘Hate Hub’. No such hub exists and there is no team, unit and/or database specifically tasked with investigating and/or prosecuting hate-motivated offending.

There was previously an intranet page which had at times been referred to as the ‘Hate Crime 101 hub’ or ‘Hate Crime Hub’ that directed staff to the Hate-Motivated Crime Learning Hub. This intranet page was originally titled only ‘Hate Crime’ but has since been renamed to ‘Hate-motivated Crime’ to reflect the content of Police’s training more accurately. The Hate-Motivated Crime Learning Hub continues to host training resources to support frontline staff to recognise, record, and respond to hate-motivated offending.

Is Te Raranga training Police officers to arrest people for ‘hate speech’?

No. Te Raranga supports officers to recognise, record, respond to and resolve hate-motivated offending. For a hate-motivated offence to occur two things must have happened:

  1. a crime has been committed (for example an assault, damage to property, or threatening behaviour)
  2. a reason the crime was committed is because of hate/hostility (bias or prejudice) towards the victim’s race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, age or any other part of their identity.

What was the total cost of the development and implementation of this training?

Police’s partnering programme, called ‘Te Raranga’, developed this new training and its toolkit. Funding for Te Raranga commenced in July 2021, and totalled $10.4 million over four years.

It is not possible to isolate training costs from funding for the rest of Te Raranga’s work programme. Consultation, engagement and research created a knowledge base for the policies and systems which have informed development of training products.

Who was consulted in the development of Police’s approach to hate-motivated crime, and the associated training?

The voices and lived experiences of our communities inform our tools and resources and ensure what we develop is authentic, accurate and beneficial. We have connected with the established relationships that New Zealand Police and our partner agencies hold with diverse communities. These communities include but are not limited to, iwi / Māori, Pasifika, LGBTQIA+, migrant and refugee, faith-based, and disability.

The programme also focused on reviewing insights from previous consultation and engagement activity, led by New Zealand Police and by partner agencies.

Training was designed with support from our internal Police network and staff.

Additionally, consultation included Te Raranga Advisory Group members. Membership includes the New Zealand Human Rights Commission; Netsafe; Te Tari Taiwhenua | Internal Affairs; Crime Stoppers; and CertNZ.

What data about hate-motivated crime will Police be capturing, and will this be published on the website?

Police can pull some data on occurrences flagged for ‘perceived hate’ from NIA. A recent example of this data is available here:

Please see the section on Police recording of hate-motivated crime for details on how to understand this data.

Note: the data shown does not mean that hate has been proven to be a motivating factor. Additionally, an increase of reports since 2019 does not necessarily mean the overall level of hate-motivated crime in New Zealand has grown, but rather could reflect increased awareness, improved reporting, and recording of these crimes. It will be several years until the underlying level of hate-motivated crime in New Zealand becomes clear through the data.

Police also proactively releases its responses to recent Official Information Act requests where it is considered the response contains data and information that has wider public interest. Some OIA responses include Police hate-related data. Visit https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/publications-and-statistics/corporate/information-releases/hate-motivated-crimes-official

How can I find out if I have been recorded as being involved in a hate-motivated crime?

Information about NIA records flagged for ‘perceived hate’ can be accessed through the same channels as standard privacy requests. For guidance on how to request information about yourself from Police please visit the Request information about yourself (Privacy Act) section of the Police website.

Who are the Police employees who have helped to develop an approach and training for hate-motivated crime?

The programme Te Raranga e sits within the Iwi & Community workgroup currently led by DCE Pieri Munro and began under the leadership of former DC Wally Haumaha. Director Prevention: Innovation & Change Mere Wilson Tuala-Fata is the responsible Director, and Inspector Gaylene Rogers is Programme Lead – Te Raranga.

Consistent with guidance produced by the Ombudsman’s Office (see Names and contact details of public sector employees | Ombudsman New Zealand), it would not be appropriate to publicise the names of staff members involved in the development and implementation of Police’s approach to hate-motivated crime and related training.