More people have reported being victims of crime, and emergency calls have increased by 40,000 in the last year, new police data shows.

New Zealand Police has released its annual report, which covers the year from June 2021 to June 2022.

It details that for every 10,000 people in New Zealand, 603 had been victims of crime in the last year, equating to about six per cent.

That's up slightly from the previous year - when 558 people per 10,000 were victims of crime.

Police also attended almost 10,000 more emergency events than previously, and 111 calls increasing by just over 40,000, the report says.

In addition, they attended 73,006 events involving a person having a mental health crisis, in distress, or threatening suicide, which was an increase of 55 per cent in the last five years.

Police estimate that the increase in mental health calls would rise due to the ongoing impacts of Covid-19.

Family harm remains the police's single-largest demand, with such an event being attended every three minutes, on average.

Assault on a person in a family relationship now represents around 66 per cent of reported serious assaults and family harm calls for service are increasing at greater rates than others.

In the last year, police investigated 175,573 reported family harm incidents - an increase of about 10,000.

The percentage of family violence re-offending, at a same or greater level of seriousness, was also up three per cent to 67 per cent.

Victoria University of Wellington criminology senior lecturer Trevor Bradley says the rise in emergency callouts for police is likely in part due to increased domestic violence.

"We've known across the world that those incidents have increased quite significantly over the pandemic, so I suspect that's part of the explanation."

Stats tell more about what police do than about crime itself

Bradley says it's likely the police data only scratches the surface and that its crime data "never has been and never will be" an accurate measurement of the actual volume of crime in Aotearoa,

"There is such a large dark figure surrounding it - that is the volume of crime that is never reported [to] or detected by police, and therefore something the police never get to know about."

Recent New Zealand crime and victim surveys found only about 25 per cent of people who have been victims of crime report it to police, he says.

The police data for people being victims of crime - which has seen an increase - includes both first-time and repeat victimisations.

Bradley says there's also some crime that's reported to police but not recorded in its own statistics.

Reasons for that, Bradley says, could be if the crime reported is considered too minor, or if there is not enough evidence.

"Police crime statistics tell us more about what police do and how police have responded than what [it tells us] about crime per say."

Victimisation rates went hand-in-hand with trust and confidence, police deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming told Morning Report.

"New Zealanders trust police significantly more than other countries trust their police so our reporting rates are trending up."

Online reporting and 105 call centres were increasing capabilities, he says.

"When we set that up, we believed that we'd be taking about 300 online victimisations a day, we're trending up to 700 so certainly that new capability is adding to the number of reports that we can take in real time."

Police taking longer to respond to crime

The average police response time for urban areas was up to almost nine minutes, one short of the standard, and for rural areas it took 16 and a half minutes.

That's an increase on last year's rural call-out time of 15 minutes, 11 seconds.

Police says the delays are influenced by a rise in the number of calls, more vehicles being on the road and the general population growth.

However, police are also falling short when it came to attending homes where burglaries had taken place within 48 hours of reporting.

Only 83 per cent of police are doing so, which is down from last year's 89 per cent and further from the standard of at least 98 per cent.

Police say this is mainly because officers are completing higher-priority responses, or because the victim did not want police to attend.

People are booking police to attend to a burglary scene when it suites them, sometimes outside the 48-hour period, says McSkimming.

"Really it's about suiting those victims needs so that we can turn up when it suits them and capture the information that we need, it's certainly not ideal but we can only attend when there's someone there with us."

Calls to 105 had a big drop, down from over a million to 743,319 in the year, and police responded to 929,000 non-emergency events.

Where to get help:

Women's Refuge:(0800 733 843

It's Not OK 0800 456 450

Shine: 0508 744 633

Victim Support: 0800 842 846

HELP Call 24/7 (Auckland): 09 623 1700, (Wellington): 04 801 6655 - push 0 at the menu

The National Network of Family Violence Services NZ has information on specialist family violence agencies.

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

-Kirsty Frame/RNZ.