AUT’s international students feel indifferent about Auckland crime

While public anxiety about crime in Auckland has intensified over the past few years, international students say it's nothing different to home.

Recent data from NZ Police show overall crime trends as stable and declining but Stats NZ found that the public’s ‘sense of safety’ has dropped.

A 2025 International Student Experience Survey, which sampled more than 5,400 student participants, found only three per cent felt living safety was “poor”, while 43 per cent considered it to be excellent.

Samoan Business student Joshua Matamua has lived in the city since 2023 and feels indifferent to the safety concerns downtown.

“I’ve heard stories about going alone here around Auckland...but I usually went alone… [a crime has] never happened to me.”

Matamua says he avoids areas like Karangahape Road at night and makes sure to go out in numbers.

He says his home country sees gang violence and drug-related crimes on the news often.

Domestic student Lila McEvoy says Auckland’s crime perception stems from geographical profiling, an analysis of geographical locations of crime and potential suspects.

“People profile individuals, but in Auckland, I feel like there’s a lot of profiling geographically.”

McEvoy says profiling is what contributes to her peers' sense of safety in the city.

AUT Criminology professor James Oleson says disruptions can lead to an intensified public imagination around crime, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and recent City Rail Link (CRL) extensions.

Oleson says an increased visible police presence may help.

“Typically, there is some minimal deterrent effect of having police either walking around a community or in a patrol car...so in the same way that when you’re speeding and you see a police car, you slow down a little bit.”

There are three components necessary for a crime to take place: a motivated offender, a suitable target and the absence of a capable guardian.

Olseson says the presence of capable guardians, whether it be security cameras or police, may reduce the motivation to offend.

French international student Lena Wojcik says police presence in the CBD makes her feel safer.

“I feel more safe here than in France.”

Research from The National Library of Medicine found an established sense of safety is a key factor to community well-being.

For international students, a sense of safety appears to be cemented, but for locals, an increased police presence and decrease in geographical profiling may be the way forward.

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Our journalists sometimes use AI tools which are checked by humans for accuracy.

AI was used to transcribe audio from the interview.