Police planned to start releasing quarterly updates on gang harm, containing the numbers of people on the National Gang List at the start of this month.
However, this has not happened due to "unforeseen delays" with the development of the report, police say.
The most recent list figures, from February this year, show there were 236 gang members in the police Southern district, up from 153 five years ago.
Documents obtained by the Otago Daily Times under the Official Information Act show police raised concerns that a focus on gang membership data was a "myopic lens" for understanding the gang problem in New Zealand and explored solutions, including not releasing the figures at all.
Nevertheless, the data is still being compiled and is available upon request.
The figures have long been a fixture for media and opposition politicians, who point to rises in the number of people on the list, while police maintain the list was created for intelligence purposes and it is not intended as a measure of gang activity.
The list was created in 2016 by the Gang Intelligence Centre, a multi-agency workgroup.
Following a refresh late last year, the centre is now known as the Gang Harm Insights Centre, which aims to provide a holistic understanding of the harm being caused by, to and within gangs.
A governance paper circulated to the police executive team in October 2021, following a May workshop, advised there would continue to be "considerable challenges" associated with the list being used incorrectly.
However, the methodology behind the list was deemed solid, with improvements such as random sample auditing being added to improve it further.
The methodology had improved since the list was introduced, so using it as a way to track total gang membership could be misleading, the paper said.
As of mid-2021, there were 8061 people on the list, 1150 having been removed — 744 of whom had left gangs and 406 of whom had died.
It had been decided that all gangs which met the criteria of being an adult gang should be added to the list, which would result in a spike in gang membership numbers.
The workshop explored ways in which defunct gang members could be removed, including those would would pass the clean slate test or had no contact with law enforcement in the last two years.
There were 137 people on the list with no offending history, and the clean slate act test would remove 913 people from the list.
Issues raised included that senior gang members were more able to evade law enforcement and both options would probably result in an undercount of the total number of gang members.
Focusing on gang membership data offered a "myopic lens" for understanding the gang problem in New Zealand and participants agreed the best way to influence a positive change in the narrative around gang membership, and to reduce the number of queries about gang numbers, was to proactively release figures, accompanied by harm insights.
There was an opportunity for the Gang Harm Insights Centre to shift the conversation around gangs to be more holistic, in the same way that the National Drug Intelligence Bureau had influenced a shift in focus towards a more health-based approach, the paper said.
A comprehensive "marketing package" would need to be carefully put together for messaging, which would explain the increase in numbers which would happen when more gangs were added to the list.
Subsequent email correspondence shows a request was made to use the phrase "communications plan" instead of marketing.
Minutes from an executive leadership team meeting in October 2021 noted meetings were held with the Ombudsman about whether the number of individuals on the list could be withheld to protect against "perverse outcomes" which undermined the purpose of the list.
The executive leadership team noted the option of not reporting the figures on the grounds they were not statistically valid, given the list having been developed as a reporting tool.
They also agreed to explore another option where only the number of new members would be reported, on the grounds that police could validate people joining gangs better than they could validate people leaving them.
A statement from police intelligence fusion teams manager Julia Smith said the first quarterly update was due to be proactively released at the start of this month.
The intention of providing a quarterly update was to provide context to the harm caused by, to, and within gangs as gang membership data was frequently requested resulting in a "polarising narrative regarding numbers" rather than a focus on gang harm, Ms Smith said.
The national gang list had been created as an intelligence tool rather than as an official statistic, and using it as a single measure to track total gang membership had the potential to be misleading.
The new gang harm update would inform ways to reduce harm in the future generations of the gang environment, which would help government-wide initiatives to respond to gang harm, Ms Smith said.
A police spokeswoman said that due to unforeseen delays with the development of the report, the targeted delivery date had not been met.
