Something broke in New Zealand's community sentencing system between 2022 and 2024. The number of offenders whose sentence details couldn't be properly recorded jumped from 1,977 to 5,610. That's not a rounding error. That's a collapse in data quality.

Here's the contrast that should worry anyone who cares about transparency: for 20 years, this problem barely existed. In 2018, just 309 sentences fell into the "inadequate data" category. By 2019, it had dropped to 90. The system was getting better at tracking who got sentenced to what.

Then 2020 hit, and the number stayed low at 93. COVID disrupted courts, delayed cases, and changed how justice worked. But the data held up.

What happened next is harder to explain. By 2022, inadequate records had jumped to 1,977. Two years later, that figure nearly tripled to 5,610. This is now the highest level of missing sentence data since 1999, when record-keeping was still being modernised.

This matters because community sentences are meant to be visible, measurable alternatives to prison. They include supervision, community work, home detention, and intensive supervision. The public is supposed to know what judges are ordering and whether it's working.

When 5,610 sentences can't be classified, you lose the ability to answer basic questions. Are supervision orders increasing? Is home detention being used more often? What's replacing prison time? Nobody knows, because the data isn't there.

The trajectory is what makes this alarming. This isn't a one-off spike. It's a steady climb from near-zero to the worst data quality in a quarter century. Something changed in how sentences are being recorded, reported, or processed between the courts and Stats NZ.

The timing raises questions. Courts have been under pressure: case backlogs, staffing shortages, new legislation. Community Corrections has been managing record caseloads. Someone, somewhere in that chain, stopped capturing the details that make these numbers meaningful.

You can't manage what you can't measure. And right now, New Zealand has lost track of enough community sentences to fill a small town. That's not a technical glitch. That's a transparency problem.