A survey to measure how much crime goes unreported has been launched by the Ministry of Justice.
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The new annual Crime and Victim Survey replaces the Crime and Safety Survey, and will this year focus on family violence.
Ministry spokesman Anton Youngman said 8000 randomly selected people will take part in the research, which will take seven months to complete.
The information gathered will be used by several government agencies.
"In order to reduce crime... we need to do what's making a difference," Mr Youngman said.
"It's often hard because we lack a very specific piece of information, which is actually how much crime is occuring.
"To do that we're now doing an annual survey to ensure that we pick up all of that reported and, more specifically, that unreported crime."
