The influx of criminals due to Australia's hardline deportation laws has stemmed a crime wave there -- and started one in New Zealand.
Newshub has obtained the Police Register and it shows an analysis of those coming since the first Kiwi-born deportee was sent here in January last year.
Police have kept track of the deportees as much as possible, and many have been offending again.
The high reoffending rate should come as no surprise given the offences the deportees racked up while in Australia.
This means each deportee has an average of just over 10 criminal offences. The five worst offenders have seriously bad records.
But not all are convicted criminals.
Among the 322 deported back to New Zealand, there are 38 who have no criminal charges overseas. That means they're likely to have been deported on "bad character" grounds.
The deportees have been arriving at an average of 23 a month -- the biggest intake in November last year when a flight labelled "Con Air" deported a number of Kiwis from Christmas Island.
It's clear the problem stems from Australia's hardline deportation laws, just 18 of the 322 have been deported from somewhere other than Australia -- they've come back from the United States, Canada, Japan, Cambodia and Bali.
The majority of those that have been sent back to New Zealand are males in their 20s. As for ethnicity, the majority are Maori.
Fears that the deportees wouldn't identify with New Zealand are real -- 20 percent of them haven't been in the country for more than 20 years.
The deportees have mainly arrived back in Auckland -- no surprise given that's the biggest international airport.
But where they went from there is a mystery in some cases -- police have lost track of 28 of the offenders.
Newshub.
