District Courts

District Courts

Prior to June 2009, new business entering the courts was increasing. Since June 2009, the trend has reversed and all jurisdictions, apart from jury trial, have experienced continuous reductions in the levels of new business entering into the courts.

Refer to the Glossary for more detailed definitions

Criminal jury trial jurisdiction

The jury trial jurisdiction deals with serious criminal cases, after defendants are committed for trial and are a subset of criminal and youth pre-committal cases.

Compared to the 2010/2011 financial year, the 2011/2012 financial year has seen a:

• 3% increase in the number of cases (new business) committed for jury trial to 3,219 cases, despite a decrease in new cases laid indictably (those heading toward a jury trial)
• 1% increase in disposals to 3,091 cases
• 4 % increase in active cases to 2,699 cases

The growth in District Court jury workloads in the last four financial years is because of two major changes to the law. These changes were:

• a new committal process that allows a registrar to commit a case to jury trial more quickly without preliminary testing of evidence in court
• middle banding of class A drug cases, which means that simpler class A drug cases are heard in the District Court, rather than the High Court

The lack of suitable hearing facilities in Christchurch, as a result of the earthquake on 22 February 2011, has contributed to the recent increase in active cases in the area. To help manage the workload, more than 90 trials have been transferred to other South Island courts since the earthquake. Christchurch started hearing jury trials again in February 2012.

Criminal - summary jurisdiction

The summary jurisdiction deals with less serious criminal cases. These cases are heard by District Court judges, community magistrates, and justices of the peace. This is the busiest jurisdiction in the court system.

Compared to the 2010/2011 financial year, the 2011/2012 financial year has seen a

• 12% decrease in new business to 156,494 cases. This was primarily a result of Police making greater use of pre-charge warnings. This approach aims to divert lower-end offences away from prosecution and court processing
• 10% decrease in disposals to 159,656
• 13 % decrease in active cases to 30,682
• 5% increase in number of cases with a scheduled defended hearing to 4,802.

Youth Court

The Youth Court is part of the District Court and deals generally with people aged between 12 and 16 years old. The Youth Court is a closed court and deals with offending by children and young people that is too serious to be dealt with any other way. It hears all cases to do with young people, except murder and manslaughter or when a young person chooses to have a jury trial.

Youth Court cases are heard by Youth Court judges, who focus on encouraging the young person to take responsibility for their offending.

Compared to the 2010/2011 financial year, the 2011/2012 financial year has seen an

• 8% decrease in new cases to 4,571
• 6% decrease in disposals to 4,436
• 12 % decrease in active cases to 1,166

Civil jurisdiction

Compared to the 2010/2011 financial year, the 2011/2012 financial year has had a

• 10% decrease in defended new business to 620 cases. This continues the decrease in new business that has been a trend for the last few years. The District Court Civil Rules (implemented in November 2009) encourage parties to settle their cases without court involvement, which has reduced the number of defended cases from 2009 onwards.
• 22% decrease in the disposals of defended cases to 715
• 15% decrease to 564 in the number of cases on hand, because the courts disposed of more cases than the number of cases filed

Family jurisdiction

Substantive applications, rather than cases, are counted in the family jurisdiction because various applications within any one case may be managed separately.

Substantive applications include:

• adoption
• alcohol and drugs
• child support
• children, young persons and their families (CYPF)
• dissolution/marriage/civil union
• domestic violence
• estates
• family proceedings/marriage/civil union/ de facto
• guardianship (Care of Children Act)
• Hague Convention
• mental health
• protection of personal and property rights (PPPR)
• relationship property
• miscellaneous.

Compared to the 2010/2011 financial year, the 2011/2012 financial year has seen a

• 4% decrease in new applications to 64,846 applications filed
• 4% decrease in the disposals to 65,298
• 2% decrease in the number of active substantive applications to 26, 885

Statistics