Statistical data about coronial cases

You might be able to access statistical data about the cases the Coroners Court deals with.

Accessing coronial data

Coronial data is held in 3 places:

  1. You should first check the Injury Information Portal(external link)
  2. If you are a researcher, you may be able to access the
    Australasian National Coroners Information System (NCIS)(external link)
  3. If neither of these are appropriate, we can search our Case Management System (CMS) for you. Email your request for specific data to Coronial.Information@justice.govt.nz

Why and how we collect statistical information

Coronial Services collects statistical data to help:

  • coroners identify areas for improvement to public safety and prevent deaths in similar circumstances
  • other government agencies and injury prevention researchers develop effective regional and national injury prevention strategies.

The CMS is a national database for New Zealand coronial cases. Information about every death reported to a coroner since 1 July 2007 is stored on the system. Data relating to cases opened before 1 July 2007 may also be available. However, it may not be of the same high quality because coroners were not required to record data on their investigations in a nationally consistent way before 1 July 2007.

What data is available

We collect the following information about a person who has died

  • name
  • age
  • sex
  • date of birth
  • place of usual residence
  • how long they lived in New Zealand
  • country of birth
  • employment
  • marital status
  • ethnicity
  • date of notification of death
  • time/location of incident 
  • activity at time of incident 
  • if a work-related incident, occupation at the time of incident 
  • industry the person worked in at the time of incident 
  • intent (both suspected at time death reported and final) 
  • mechanism of injury (primary, secondary and tertiary) 
  • object or substance involved (primary, secondary and tertiary) 
  • medical cause(s) of death (as specified in post mortem report)
  • where the death is related to a motor vehicle accident:
    • vehicle type
    • driver/passenger 
    • counterpart (such as, if another vehicle is involved)
    • context (that is, where it happened, what type of accident it was)

We collect the following information about a person’s death

The CMS also contains the World Health Organisation (WHO) classifications for cause of death (ICD-10) and causes of injury (ICECI).

We collect the following information about the coroner’s investigation

  • coroner’s provisional and final finding about the cause(s) and circumstances of death
  • brief summary of the police report on the circumstance of the death

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