Safest Suburbs in New Zealand

It's the question every New Zealander asks before a move and almost never out loud. It gets asked of Google at eleven at night after an open home, asked sideways at a barbecue, asked of a mate's cousin who lived there in 2009 and has strong opinions. We'd rather you asked the data.

So here it is. These rankings use reported Police victimisation statistics and deprivation figures, applied the same way to all 6,398 suburbs and localities in the country, with the workings on display. The numbers describe what gets reported to Police, not the character of anyone's street, and no spreadsheet can tell you how a place feels walking back from the dairy at dusk. What it can do is replace hearsay with something you can check.

Fair warning about the suburbs at the top of this list: the most dramatic entry in their statistics tends to involve a missing trailer or wandering stock. In this category, boring is the entire point. Boring wins.