Depending on where you are on the country, the time more people become victims of crime will change. (file photo)

No matter where you are in the country, 3pm on Monday is when you're most likely to become a victim of crime.

There's also a high rate of theft at 3pm every day. It coincides with the end of school. When students are released, the potential number of people who can become perpetrators - and targets - increases. Therefore, so does the opportunity for crime.

Between July 2014 until November 2017, 4643 victimisations occurred during the hour from 3pm to 4pm on a Monday, according to police data.

Police chief data scientist Gavin Knight, says: "The biggest crime type by volume by victimisation is theft and the 3pm to 4pm, that's after school time, isn't it. So you can imagine there's a whole lot of young people have just been released (from school) so there's a step-up in potential for crime."

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"Crime is generally proportional to the number of victims - the number of potential targets, for property - and the number of offenders.

"So when they stay in schools there's less people out there in the population."

When considering the connection between school finishing time and the crime spike, it was worth taking into account that theft was a less serious crime than others, he said.

The police data also broke down hourly victimisations for each region. For example, the most per hour for Auckland also occurred at 3pm on Monday. It was the same in the Waikato.

More populated regions faced upticks during weekday afternoons.

But in some less populated regions - Nelson, Marlborough, Otago, Southland and the West Coast - their peaks were often in the early hours of a Sunday morning.

The hour from 5am onwards on a Wednesday was when the lowest number of crimes occurred - 480.

123RF Having access to data that shows when and where crimes happen allows police to improve how they deal with it. (file photo)

In all regions, the least number of crimes occurred in the hours around 5am and 6am.

WHEN DO DIFFERENT CRIMES OCCUR?

The most acts intended to cause injury occurred between 11pm on Saturday and 3am on Sunday. There was another spike between 11pm Friday and 3am Saturday.

Sexual assault and related offences most frequently occurred between 11pm on Saturday and 4am on Sunday. Each day of the week there was a spike at 12 noon, and most days, numbers also increased during the 3pm-5pm time window. Numbers were also up between midnight Friday and 3am Saturday.

Knight said: "You notice that it varies a lot for different crime types. So in Wellington, if I look at (where) gets the most crime it's downtown, and if you look at when they are the busiest it's the early hours of Friday morning and Saturday morning, which is when all the late-night drinking occurs."

The early Sunday morning spikes in victimisation were also associated with late-night drinking. So were the late night spikes - often during the weekend - in crimes causing injuries, sexual assault and other related crimes.

Interestingly, most abduction, harassment or other incidents occurred at 3pm on Monday, 9pm Monday and 9pm Thursday. Their numbers, when they did spike, were much lower than for, say, theft.

Looking at the times in which they occurred, Knight said - while he hadn't looked at what was driving those numbers - he could imagine some of them might relate to disputes between parents over custody.

Three in the afternoon was post-school, and 9pm could be a time at which children were returning to one home or the other.

Robbery, extortion and related offences ramped up every afternoon and into the evenings.Spikes in victimisation occurred on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

Unlawful entry with intent, burglary, and breaking and entering only really had a lull during the hours of 6am and 7am. Noticeable increases occurred at noon daily and in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday.

Theft and related offences followed a daily trend, with the bulk of all victimisations occurring between 10am and 6pm every day, the hours 12pm to 4pm having an even higher rate.

Knight said the daily increase in offending in the afternoon and evening co-incided with the after-school period each day. "Last year there was a bit of a spate of young people committing aggravated robberies, again, out of school but also late night."

The numbers didn't surprise him. "The places that are being robbed, when are they open? And the people being robbed, when are they out and about?

"A lot of the crime science research really shows that opportunity is the mother of crime. So when are people most vulnerable? When they are drunk. When are people out and about as opposed to home and safe? Think about when opportunities exist and that will explain a lot of it."

That goes hand-in-hand with the bulk of theft and related crimes occurring between 10am and 6pm - when shops are open and people are at work.

Knight said it was worth noting the victimisation numbers only included incidents when the time they occurred was known. If those without times were able to have a time associated, it could potentially skew the results.

HOW DATA HELPS POLICING

"It helps us know who is being victimised and who is causing the offending. We have the individual records below this, so we know the individual people," Knight said

"So for sexual assault we know that females, particularly young females - are more victimised than ... others in the population. If we look at 10 to 14-year-old victims of sexual assault we know that Māori are over-represented and often the offender is related.

"If we look at 15 to 19-year-olds, the victims are distributed across different ethnic groups and the offenders are more likely not to be family.

"In other words, that helps us understand how people are safe and unsafe. So we might work differently with partner agencies to address the problem of sexual assault for 10 to 14-year-old Māori females as we would for 15 to 19-year-old females generally across the population."

The where and when helps, too. Late night incidents recorded in an inner city would let police know when to deploy and conduct checks at venues like hotels.

It also aided with other activities like making applications or submissions to liquor licensing authorities.

"It also helps us work with local authorities and the licencees themselves so they know the risk times.

"There's a whole ranges of services that police provide that this sort of data help with."

Data could also be assessed over time. If certain types of crime were higher during a month than in the past, police could then look at why and deal with it better in the future. Handling traditional summer hotspots like Mount Maunganui and Whangamata - to make them safer - was an example

Looking forward, Knight said changing technology was changing the nature of crime.

"I think throughout police at the moment there is cybercrime training, online crime training going on to help us be aware of that. Financial crime over time has changed away, particularly from fraud, to be more electronic and less traditional."

Knight said it was important to remember there were different dynamics affecting each crime type over the week.

Those being victimised also varied so individual risk was different than the average. Opportunity and context were huge contributing factors to crime rates. "It's all manageable by managing those opportunities."