District Courts
District Courts
Jurisdiction
The New Zealand District Courts have originating jurisdiction over all criminal matters. They deal with all but a small number of serious offences which are dealt with by the High Court. In its civil jurisdiction the District Courts can hear general claims up to $200,000.
The Family Court and Youth Court are divisions of the District Court.
These are the annual statistics for the District Court, including the Family Court, Youth Court, and Civil for the 2014/15 financial year. Please refer to the glossary for the definitions of terms used in this commentary.
Criminal Jurisdiction
Total Criminal for District Courts
In the 2014/15 financial year, there was a 1% increase from 2013/14 in total criminal business for District Courts, a reverse of the downward trend that had occurred in the previous 5 years. By comparison, there had been of a 34% total reduction between 2009/10 and 2013/14 financial years (with a 10% decrease in 2013/14 alone).
Comparing the 2014/15 financial year to 2013/14, this jurisdiction has seen an:
- 1% increase in new business to 134,573 cases
- 2% decrease in disposals to 134,353 cases
- 1% increase in active cases to 28,746 cases
Jury trials – subset of total criminal
The jury trial jurisdiction deals with the more serious criminal cases. The District Court jury trial caseload is made up of cases commenced under either the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 (SPA) or the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 (CPA). The majority of jury trial cases in the District Court now follow the CPA process, with non-CPA cases only making up 7% of the active jury trials as at June 30 2015.
There was a 9% increase in the number of new jury trials in 2014/15. The composition of new jury cases has changed, with a higher number of cases where the lead charge was a violent offence compared to 2013/14.
Comparing the 2014/15 financial year to 2013/14, this jurisdiction has seen a:
- 9% increase of new cases to 2,595
- 20% decrease in disposals to 2,195 cases
- 4% increase in active cases to 2,004 cases
It should be noted that the figures quoted relate to case volumes and not the underlying complexity and time taken to deal with Jury Trials. Although disposal rates have decreased, what is not shown is that the age of the cases on hand has decreased significantly. This is because of those cases that were disposed, there were a number of older cases have been waiting for a long period of time. This is good news because it reduces the delay or the time taken for any case to be finalised.
Youth Court – subset of total criminal
From 1 July 2013, significant changes to the Youth Court jurisdiction mean all serious charges, except murder and manslaughter, relating to young people, and still including certain charges against children aged 12 and 13 must now be heard and determined in the Youth Court.
While the 2014/2015 financial year has seen Youth Court numbers continue to sit at historically low numbers, the decline has now flattened, with a slight rise in new business and only a 1% decrease in disposals during compared to the previous year.
Comparing the 2014/15 financial year to 2013/14, this jurisdiction has seen a:
- 0.4% increase for new business to 3,931 cases
- 1% decrease in disposals to 3,931
- 8% decrease in active cases to 934
Civil Jurisdiction
The majority of cases in the civil system are undefended, and are resolved without proceeding to hearing and are not included in figures.
Comparing the 2014/15 financial year to 2013/14, this jurisdiction has seen a:
- 75% increase in the number of newly defended cases to 818
- 45% increase in the disposals of defended cases to 747
- 15% increase in the number of active defended cases to 581.
The increases in volumes for the civil jurisdiction are a result of the changes to the District Court rules that came into effect July 2014. These changes reintroduced the ability to apply for summary judgment early on in the process and also enabled the court to identify whether a case was defended earlier on in the process. This has resulted in increased volumes of defended cases.
Family Court Jurisdiction
The Family Court makes orders for any person (including the unborn) in need of care and protection. Not only is the age band wide but the variety of cases that come before the Court is considerable.
Statistics for the Family Court are provided here as the number of applications as opposed to the number of cases. This is due to the fact that each case may involve several applications. Therefore, the numbers reported below do not represent either the numbers of litigants or substantive cases before the Family Court and are not representative of how cases are managed.
Applications are grouped under the following Case Types:
- Care of Children Act
- Children, young persons and their families
- Dissolution
- Domestic violence
- Mental health
- Protection of personal and property rights
- Property
- Other
One third of all applications fall within the Care of Children Act case type. These applications relate to care arrangements for children. New applications filed under the Care of Children Act (CoCA) have fallen as expected following the March 2014 changes to the family law system.
Comparing the 2014/15 financial year to 2013/14, this jurisdiction has seen a:
- 7% decrease in new applications to 58,208
- 1% decrease in disposals to 59,700
- 10% decrease in the number of active applications to 23,346.