The New Zealand government's proposed Crimes Amendment Bill, aimed at introducing harsher penalties for low-value theft, is projected to cause a dramatic gender shift in the prison population, with women's imprisonment expected to surge by 63% over the next decade, nearly double the overall 35% increase, according to Ministry of Justice projections.
New Theft Category Blurs Legal Lines
The bill creates a new category of low-value theft committed in an 'offensive, threatening, insulting or disorderly manner.' Its explanatory note states it is designed to allow harsher penalties for 'retail crime … when the threshold for robbery is not met.' Under current law, robbery requires stealing from a person using force, threats, or intimidation. The new category blurs an important legal distinction by covering non-violent conduct but attracting penalties closer to those for violent crime.
Disproportionate Impact on Women
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith argues tougher penalties are needed to improve public safety and that prison numbers will fall once crime declines. However, the bill will affect women disproportionately because theft is a common charge leading to women being placed in remand prison. Men are typically remanded for other offences, making them less likely to be affected by the proposed law. The policy intended to make the public safer may, in fact, make life far less safe for the children of imprisoned women.
Daughters Face Increased Risk of Abuse
Most women in prison are mothers. Expanding imprisonment for minor offences is likely to expose a new generation of girls to preventable violence and trauma. A national survey in the United States shows that girls face a 1-in-4 risk of childhood sexual abuse when living with both biological parents, compared to 1-in-8 for boys. Ministry of Justice data show very similar overall risk levels for New Zealand children in 2024. When children live with their mother alone, the risk for girls increases to 1-in-3, and for boys to 1-in-4, because fathers' absence removes one layer of protection.
New Zealand research estimates that the mass incarceration of Māori men in the 1980s and 1990s—driven by Māori urbanisation, biased government policies, and the youthfulness of the Māori population—likely exposed Māori girls to a 5.5 times greater risk of childhood sexual abuse compared with Pākehā girls. The same mechanism now threatens to repeat itself through the imprisonment of mothers, but the effects are likely to be worse. Children will either live with their father alone, with grandparents, or in foster families, increasing the statistical risk of sexual assault for girls to an estimated 1-in-2—a 43% increase in risk compared to girls who live with their mothers alone. The risk increases solely because of the living arrangement, which exposes children to a wider range of adults and less consistent supervision.
Intergenerational Consequences
The Crimes Amendment Bill may reduce neither crime nor harm; instead, it risks deepening both across generations. Many children may be handed over to Oranga Tamariki, the state agency responsible for their safety. However, the number of children who experienced abuse and neglect in state care has increased again last year. The recent Royal Inquiry into Abuse in State Care revealed how horrific these experiences can be and their long-term consequences. When mothers are incarcerated, children also face greater risks of poverty, depression, self-harm, and behavioural problems such as failing in school, fighting, stealing, and substance abuse.
In the New Zealand context, studies show that most incarcerated Māori women have lived through such layers of harm long before entering the justice system, and these experiences have often shaped the harm they later inflict on others. The projected surge in women's imprisonment is therefore not only a crisis for the women themselves but also for their daughters—a generation of girls exposed to significantly higher risks of harm simply because their mothers are behind bars. If policymakers fail to consider these intergenerational effects, New Zealand risks repeating a pattern already documented in its recent history: using imprisonment to address social problems that ultimately deepen them, especially for Māori families.
