Around 16.1 events occur per High Court criminal case, says justice minister

Justice Minister Andrew Little has shared exact figures for the number of events per criminal case in the courts.

In response to a query directed by National MP Mark Mitchell, Little has revealed that were an average of 16.1 events per criminal case disposed in the High Court, while the averages for the District Court and for the Youth Court were 5.1 events and 8.8 events, respectively.

Little has defined an “event” as a hearing in a courtroom, including administrative events, pre-trial hearings, trials, and sentencings. The term could also apply to an administrative event dealt with on the papers.

The data were based on statistics obtained from the Case Management System of the Ministry of Justice as of 7 October, representing the average number of events that took place for each of the disposed cases for the 12 months ending in September.

Twelve-monthly figures were used in order to achieve consistency with previous responses in terms of average disposal time, as well as to avoid major variations caused by small numbers of disposals.