July 9, 2024 • 18 mins
Crime is one of the key issues the coalition government was voted in on, and it’s easy to see why.
The latest data shows overall crime is sitting steady – but despite barely moving figures, people are feeling more unsafe.
The government wants to tackle crime and create fewer victims of violent offences, but with law and order their key focus for the coming months, are they focusing on the right crimes?
To run us through the numbers and the policies, today on The Front Page we’re joined by senior political journalist, Derek Cheng.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer: Paddy Fox
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Crime is
one of the key issues the coalition government was voted
in on and it's easy to see why. The latest
data shows overall crime is sitting steady, but despite barely
(00:29):
moving figures, people are feeling more unsafe. The government wants
to tackle crime and create fewer victims of violent offenses,
but with law and order their key focus for the
coming months, are they focusing on the right crimes to
run us through the numbers and the policies. Today on
(00:51):
the Front Page were joined by senior political journalist Derek Cheng.
Crime in this country, Derek, people are sick of it.
Aligne Prime Minister loves to shout from the rooftops, but
people are actually sick of crime, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, it depends what you look at. So you know,
there are lots of different measures for crime. There's no
definitive crime data. And when you're looking at different crime
data sources, the best thing is to look at the
trends over time. So you know, the latest crime and
Victim Survey for example, it includes unreported crime. You know
(01:32):
a lot of crime is not reported, roughly three quarters
of it, so it's considered one of the better crime statistics.
And if you look at that survey, crime has been
relatively steady since twenty eighteen, which was the first year
of the survey, So about seventy percent of us say
that we live crime free lives. But a different measure
there on feeling unsafe. There's been a big increase in
(01:53):
those of us who feel unsafe. That's gone from nine
to fifteen percent over the last six years, with the
biggest jump occurring between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three.
And it's also for victims and non victims, So there's
a little weird thing going on there. But it's not
uncommon for feelings of safety to not necessarily reflect the
amount of crime that's going on, and there's lots of
(02:15):
factors that are potentially at play there. So the proportion
of Asian New Zealanders, for example, feeling unsafe doubled from
eleven to twenty two percent over that time, and the
surveys suggested that racism during COVID might have contributed to that.
What does that mean for the government. While the steady
rate of crime doesn't really fit with Luxin's narrative that
crime is out of control. He much rather prefers to
(02:37):
cherry pickers crime data to suit his message, and that,
to be fair, is not uncommon for politicians. And those
results also don't really sit with Luxen's lines about keewis
don't feel safe in that homes. He's right that there's
been an increase in feelings of not being safe, but
I don't think anyone would take fifteen percent and just
broadly say walky, we don't feel in their homes.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's interesting data, hey, when it comes out and those
victim surveys, because you're right, when you look at it
on the outset, you can't really see any obvious trends.
But if you choose to zoom in on specifics, as in,
you know, a youth crime, for instance, over this period
these ages, you can if you zoom in and pinpoint
(03:22):
some statistics, you can say that during this specific time
youth crime got more serious. But like you say, if
you zoom out, then it's a completely different picture.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, I think that people's experience of crime is often
a different picture entirely because if you are a victim
of crime and that will affect you and then your
household and you're you know, your wider circle. So you know,
you're right that youth crime has been ticking up in
recent years, and that's particularly prevalent in things like robberies
(03:54):
and burglaries and theft, and you know that is in
the statistics as well. But you know, even if overall
crime is quite steady, how people experiencing it and how
that goes through the grapevine the society is very different. So,
like I said before, it is not that uncommon for
people to feel less safe, even if the crime data
doesn't really show that we are actually less safe.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Look, we're seeing a lot in the media and coming
up from police about, you know, a recent incidence of
sort of increasingly younger people doing increasingly severe offending. The
stats over the.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Last few years actually show overall that youth crime offending
numbers are decreasing, but what we're seeing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Is sort of worse offending.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
What challenge does it create for the government when people
are more afraid of crime than actually experiencing it.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, I think you know, a lot of politics, as
retail politics, you have to respond to what the perceptions are.
So you know, it suits. The Prime Minister Christopher Luxelm
to say that crime is out of control and that
people don't feel safe in their homes because that resonates
with people, and then he can come in and say, well,
(05:10):
this is our law and order agender, and we know
these things are popular. So when we say we're going
to crack down on gangs, yes, gang membership has gone up,
largely because of the five oh one departies from Australia,
so we're going to do something about that. Youth crime
is up, so you know, we've got our boot camps,
We've campaigned on them. Doesn't matter what the evidence says.
(05:30):
In particular, because we see a problem, we all know
there's a problem when we're going to do something about it.
Three strikes, longer sentences, these are all things that resonate
with the public. So it's a common political strategy to
respond to the perceptions of what's going on out there,
and this government's no different. Really.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
You've also seen another survey recently that details the types
of crimes that people experience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, vehicle thefts and
burglaries topped the charts.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Hey, yeah, this is the episode survey and it was
a global survey. They also talked to like a thousand
New Zealanders and in New Zealand anyway, they didn't do
it for New Zealand last year, so you can't only
compare years. But it has a unique question where you know,
have you seen or heard this particular thing in your
neighborhood in the past twelve months. So vehicle theft, that
particular crime has doubled according to the Crime and Victim Survey,
(06:21):
so this also kind of aligned with that, saying that
it was very visible. Three and five people have witnessed
the vehicle theft fifty seven percent, burglars fifty six percent vandalism. Interestingly,
forty four percent said they had seen or heard a
gang in their neighborhood. But again we can't compare that
with previous years because there's no data on the previous years,
so we don't know if that's going up or down.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Prime Minister chrispher Luxon previously said that he wants to
see twenty thousand fewer victims of violent crimes such as assault,
robbery and sexual assault. How has the government responded to
these surveys.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Well, this is quite interesting because assault, sexual assault, robbery
they make up in the New Zealand crime and victims
of violent offenses. But this is not the measure he
likes to talk about every time he hears the words
law and order. You know, I tried to ask him
about this and the survey in particular recently, and you know,
he doesn't really talk with you when you ask about
(07:14):
law and order. He just talks at you. So his
response every time is just ad nauseam. Violent crime is
up thirty three percent.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Crime has escalated in New Zealand over the last six years,
and under a labor government that frankly has been very
soft on crime. Since twenty seventeen, violent crime is up
over thirty three percent. Serious assaults have more than doubled.
Retail crime is up over one hundred percent. New Zealanders
are not feeling safe from their own homes and their
own businesses or their communities.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
But his measure here is victimizations police victimizations for specific
offense acts intended to cause injury. And he's right, he's
comparing the number in the year twenty seventeen with twenty
twenty three and that's gone up thirty three percent. But
you know this suits his message that things got so
much worse under Labor. But if he chose, for example,
the number of people charged or convicted for that particular offense,
(08:04):
then the trend under Labor is steady or even decreasing.
So let's say that he wanted to use violent offenses
in the Crime and Victim Survey as his measure for
the trend in crime under Labor. But under that survey,
there's no significant difference in the proportion of kiwis experiencing
those offenses when Labor was in office, so it doesn't
suit his message. Having said that, there's been quite an
(08:26):
increase in that specific measure violent defenses. There were twenty
three thousand more victims in twenty twenty three compared to
twenty twenty two, So his public service goal for twenty
thirty is to reduce the number of victims by twenty thousand,
But that actually isn't very ambitious because he just wants
to dial it back to twenty twenty two levels. As
for the government response to the survey, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith,
(08:49):
he predictably said, well, that's why we need to get
tough on crime, that's why we need longer sentences, that's
why we need to smash the gangs, etc. You know,
even though there are still questions about whether any of
that policy agenda will make a difference.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Three of their key law and order policies are around
reintroducing the three strikes and boot camps for young offenders
and making life more difficult for gangs. Now, is there
any evidence that those policies will actually work well?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Ministry of Justice officials put the proposed laws through the
ringer and they've give an assessment of these things. When
it comes to the anti gang stuff, the officials were
pretty much a scathing as it gets. You know, there's
no evidence they'll work. They might make things worse by
creating more friction between gangs and the states, and it
might end up in court, you know, if they challenge
(09:48):
for breaching the Bill of Rights acts as far as
three strikes go. They said that there was no significant
quantifiable benefit for a policy that's going to cost millions
of dollars. You know, this is exactly the thing that
Luxen moraled against with labor, where they throw money at
something even though it doesn't work. And those officials also
challenged the government on a number of their favorite law
(10:09):
and order slogans that longer sentences make people safer that
the law is good for Maori because there will be
few Maori victims, that it will deter crimes from happening,
none of which has any evidential basis. Boot camps we've
talked about a lot. You know, there's a bunch of
academic research saying that they're the least effective tool when
it comes to youth offending. They failed in the past
(10:29):
under the last National government under John Key, where the
reoffending rates were north of eighty percent, and where they
have been good it tends to be because of the
support that goes with the programs, nothing to do with
the boot camp model itself, and we've also recently had
all the inconsistency around whether the Defense Force will be involved.
(10:49):
But having said that, you know, none of that means
that the policy of the programs won't work. To say
this that there's no evidence that they worked before doesn't
necessarily mean that they didn't work. You know, three strikes
version one might have stopped one gruesome crime from happening
because someone was in prison for longer, and if that
has happened, then Luxelon would probably say it was worth it.
(11:09):
The problem there is that the crime might have just
been delayed or redirected inside of prison, and that the
harm over that criminal's lifetime hasn't diminished in any way.
I think more generally, there are so many aspects that
make up the crime equation, so it's impossible to say
whether any one policy definitively did this thing to crime levels.
(11:30):
There's also like a bunch of other things happening, like
more visible police on the beat, the Social Investment Program,
for example, a plan to tackle truancy. So you know,
if there was less poverty, less truancy, less homelessness, crime
would almost certainly go down, regardless of whatever policies that
have no evidence behind them are enacted, or even in
(11:51):
spite of them. It's not about gang pictures.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Let's look at the ultimate course and the greatest violence
you can inflict anybody.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It's poverty. That's the ultimate pause.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Clearly, people having their cars stolen and their homes broken
into as a top concern for New Zealander's huge interest
in The Herald's most Burgled street story the other day.
Can those all be blamed on young offenders and gangs?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I suppose, Well, that's quite hard to say, because police
do gather data on crimes committed by people on the
National Gangs List, but it's not publicly available, so it's
not like you control through that data yourself. They released
some stats recently. Gang members make up less than a
quarter of a percent of the whole population, but they
are responsible for sixteen percent of a robberies, eighteen percent
(12:43):
of all serious violent crime, twenty five percent of all kidnapping.
The biggest increases in the last decade were with assaults,
but we know that gang membership has been on the rise,
of some ten thousand gang members at the moment. Youth
crime also has been rising globally following the increase of
social isolation from the pandemic, and looking at youth offenses,
(13:05):
there has been a big jump in theft in burglaries
and robberies, So there's at least some correlation there between
rising youth crime, more gang members and those types of offenses.
You know, we've talked earlier about vehicle thefts being on
the app and home burglaries there, so there's likely a
correlation there. But when you're trying to look at blaming,
(13:26):
you probably need to look at overall what the drivers
of crime are, and that's a very complex intersection of
lots of different things, poverty, housing, health, intergenerational trauma, educational opportunities,
things like that. You know, there's a reason that politicians
keep their slogans simple and snappy, that things are almost
always much more complex than that.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Can we legislate our way out of people getting their
cars stolen or at least maybe put some more money
towards free anti theft devices for car owners or something
to make people safer. Would that be a better use
of the government's money, do you think?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
You know, that's quite hard to say as well, because
a lot of that type of policy is really kind
of crystal ball gazing. One thing that the government is
doing or wanting to do, is to put way more
police on the beat. And we know that police visibility.
I mean, if you're going to go and steal a
car and you see a cop down the road, then
you're probably going to think twice, right, So that's one
way to boost the crime prevention tools. There's also obviously
(14:23):
challenges around that because a bunch of our police are
heading over to Australia and the government wants five hundred
additional police officers by the end of next year. Whether
they get to do that remains to be seen. And
you know, police is also one of those departments that
have had to penny pinch like all the other ones
as well, So you know anti theft devices. I'm not sure.
I haven't really seen any data on how effective those are.
(14:45):
But I mean, if you're going to steal something and
there's a lock across the steering wheel or something, then
and the next car doesn't have one, then you're probably
likely to skip that one and go on to the
next one one.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
In ten Kiwei's experience fraud according to the crime and
Victim surveys.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Look is this really for real?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And they said absolutely, there's no question in your our
minds that you have been scammed.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
And then they say them, we can't recover it. Asb
told Tim, his money was gone too. How much money
had you invested?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I invested four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
It's a feeling of complete and utter loss, devastation, worse
day of my life.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Why aren't we hearing more from the government about tackling
this issue when it's one of the most dominant unreported crimes.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Well, if I'm being cynical, in short, I would just
say that there aren't really many votes there. Fraud is
the most common crime in New Zealand now it has
doubled the proportion of Kiwi's experience for it has doubled
in the last six years. But it's not something that
really makes a lot of headlines. It doesn't make people's
skin crawl. I guess when they're sitting at home watching TV,
safe in their homes after work. You know, it doesn't
(15:57):
stir up the kind of fear that makes people go
to the ballot box and vote.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
What about family and domestic harm? This is a persistent
issue in this country and it doesn't appear to be
on top of any priority list, does it.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
No, that's right, and it's been a bit of an
issue this year because police have said that they're stepping
back from low level family violence callouts because they aren't
and shouldn't be the state's tool for non crime social problems.
But if nothing steps in there to fill that void,
you know, those situations can easily escalate into more problematic
ones and family violence. You know, it's a plague in
(16:31):
New Zealand. But again being cynical here, those populations aren't
really ones that vote very much, so it's not going
to be as naturally on politicians, radar as other things
that grab headlines and make people go to the ballot box.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And given the rates of crime have barely changed in
recent years, is the government fighting a losing battle to
try and make us safer when it seems people's feelings
don't really reflect reality anyway?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
I think you know, the government will see it self
is winning if what they're doing resonates with the public.
Right So if they're seem to be doing something, you know,
the stuff that people are rightly or wrongly worried about,
and that's youth crime. So they've got their boot camps,
it's gangs, so they have their anti gang legislation. People
think that sentences are two light. Surveys have shown that
(17:19):
multiple times, so they're going to lengthen sentences. So whether
they work or not is almost secondary. I mean, look
at making it an aggravating factor. If you hit the cornerdiry,
how many robbers are going to go into the corner
diiry and look to see if there's more than one
worker in there or if there's a home attached to it.
Which are the factors that would make it an aggravating
factor of sentencing. You know, no one's probably going to
(17:40):
look at those things. That doesn't mean it doesn't look
like the government isn't doing something to protect a sector
of society who's rightly been set up with the RAM
rays and the use attacks and the robberies. So a
government can point to all the things that they're doing
and they can give themselves a big tick as long
as it resonates with the public. Of course, if crime
then drops and people feel safe, that's obviously great, But
(18:02):
there's so many things that go into that crime equation,
and so it's impossible to say whether any policy is
responsible for that. Of course, things could also get a
lot worse, and they haven't over the last six years
according to that crime and Victim survey. But if they
do get a lot worse, then people will ultimately get disillusioned,
feel less and less safe. But for the moment, that
is a hypothetical problem for a second term.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Thanks for joining us, Derek. That's it for this episode
of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
stories and extensive news coverage at enzet Herald dot co
dot z. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals
with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to
(18:48):
the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Hilda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Crime is
one of the key issues the coalition government was voted
in on and it's easy to see why. The latest
data shows overall crime is sitting steady, but despite barely
(00:29):
moving figures, people are feeling more unsafe. The government wants
to tackle crime and create fewer victims of violent offenses,
but with law and order their key focus for the
coming months, are they focusing on the right crimes to
run us through the numbers and the policies. Today on
(00:51):
the Front Page were joined by senior political journalist Derek Cheng.
Crime in this country, Derek, people are sick of it.
Aligne Prime Minister loves to shout from the rooftops, but
people are actually sick of crime, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, it depends what you look at. So you know,
there are lots of different measures for crime. There's no
definitive crime data. And when you're looking at different crime
data sources, the best thing is to look at the
trends over time. So you know, the latest crime and
Victim Survey for example, it includes unreported crime. You know
(01:32):
a lot of crime is not reported, roughly three quarters
of it, so it's considered one of the better crime statistics.
And if you look at that survey, crime has been
relatively steady since twenty eighteen, which was the first year
of the survey, So about seventy percent of us say
that we live crime free lives. But a different measure
there on feeling unsafe. There's been a big increase in
(01:53):
those of us who feel unsafe. That's gone from nine
to fifteen percent over the last six years, with the
biggest jump occurring between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three.
And it's also for victims and non victims, So there's
a little weird thing going on there. But it's not
uncommon for feelings of safety to not necessarily reflect the
amount of crime that's going on, and there's lots of
(02:15):
factors that are potentially at play there. So the proportion
of Asian New Zealanders, for example, feeling unsafe doubled from
eleven to twenty two percent over that time, and the
surveys suggested that racism during COVID might have contributed to that.
What does that mean for the government. While the steady
rate of crime doesn't really fit with Luxin's narrative that
crime is out of control. He much rather prefers to
(02:37):
cherry pickers crime data to suit his message, and that,
to be fair, is not uncommon for politicians. And those
results also don't really sit with Luxen's lines about keewis
don't feel safe in that homes. He's right that there's
been an increase in feelings of not being safe, but
I don't think anyone would take fifteen percent and just
broadly say walky, we don't feel in their homes.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's interesting data, hey, when it comes out and those
victim surveys, because you're right, when you look at it
on the outset, you can't really see any obvious trends.
But if you choose to zoom in on specifics, as in,
you know, a youth crime, for instance, over this period
these ages, you can if you zoom in and pinpoint
(03:22):
some statistics, you can say that during this specific time
youth crime got more serious. But like you say, if
you zoom out, then it's a completely different picture.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, I think that people's experience of crime is often
a different picture entirely because if you are a victim
of crime and that will affect you and then your
household and you're you know, your wider circle. So you know,
you're right that youth crime has been ticking up in
recent years, and that's particularly prevalent in things like robberies
(03:54):
and burglaries and theft, and you know that is in
the statistics as well. But you know, even if overall
crime is quite steady, how people experiencing it and how
that goes through the grapevine the society is very different. So,
like I said before, it is not that uncommon for
people to feel less safe, even if the crime data
doesn't really show that we are actually less safe.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Look, we're seeing a lot in the media and coming
up from police about, you know, a recent incidence of
sort of increasingly younger people doing increasingly severe offending. The
stats over the.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Last few years actually show overall that youth crime offending
numbers are decreasing, but what we're seeing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Is sort of worse offending.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
What challenge does it create for the government when people
are more afraid of crime than actually experiencing it.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, I think you know, a lot of politics, as
retail politics, you have to respond to what the perceptions are.
So you know, it suits. The Prime Minister Christopher Luxelm
to say that crime is out of control and that
people don't feel safe in their homes because that resonates
with people, and then he can come in and say, well,
(05:10):
this is our law and order agender, and we know
these things are popular. So when we say we're going
to crack down on gangs, yes, gang membership has gone up,
largely because of the five oh one departies from Australia,
so we're going to do something about that. Youth crime
is up, so you know, we've got our boot camps,
We've campaigned on them. Doesn't matter what the evidence says.
(05:30):
In particular, because we see a problem, we all know
there's a problem when we're going to do something about it.
Three strikes, longer sentences, these are all things that resonate
with the public. So it's a common political strategy to
respond to the perceptions of what's going on out there,
and this government's no different. Really.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
You've also seen another survey recently that details the types
of crimes that people experience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, vehicle thefts and
burglaries topped the charts.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Hey, yeah, this is the episode survey and it was
a global survey. They also talked to like a thousand
New Zealanders and in New Zealand anyway, they didn't do
it for New Zealand last year, so you can't only
compare years. But it has a unique question where you know,
have you seen or heard this particular thing in your
neighborhood in the past twelve months. So vehicle theft, that
particular crime has doubled according to the Crime and Victim Survey,
(06:21):
so this also kind of aligned with that, saying that
it was very visible. Three and five people have witnessed
the vehicle theft fifty seven percent, burglars fifty six percent vandalism. Interestingly,
forty four percent said they had seen or heard a
gang in their neighborhood. But again we can't compare that
with previous years because there's no data on the previous years,
so we don't know if that's going up or down.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Prime Minister chrispher Luxon previously said that he wants to
see twenty thousand fewer victims of violent crimes such as assault,
robbery and sexual assault. How has the government responded to
these surveys.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Well, this is quite interesting because assault, sexual assault, robbery
they make up in the New Zealand crime and victims
of violent offenses. But this is not the measure he
likes to talk about every time he hears the words
law and order. You know, I tried to ask him
about this and the survey in particular recently, and you know,
he doesn't really talk with you when you ask about
(07:14):
law and order. He just talks at you. So his
response every time is just ad nauseam. Violent crime is
up thirty three percent.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Crime has escalated in New Zealand over the last six years,
and under a labor government that frankly has been very
soft on crime. Since twenty seventeen, violent crime is up
over thirty three percent. Serious assaults have more than doubled.
Retail crime is up over one hundred percent. New Zealanders
are not feeling safe from their own homes and their
own businesses or their communities.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
But his measure here is victimizations police victimizations for specific
offense acts intended to cause injury. And he's right, he's
comparing the number in the year twenty seventeen with twenty
twenty three and that's gone up thirty three percent. But
you know this suits his message that things got so
much worse under Labor. But if he chose, for example,
the number of people charged or convicted for that particular offense,
(08:04):
then the trend under Labor is steady or even decreasing.
So let's say that he wanted to use violent offenses
in the Crime and Victim Survey as his measure for
the trend in crime under Labor. But under that survey,
there's no significant difference in the proportion of kiwis experiencing
those offenses when Labor was in office, so it doesn't
suit his message. Having said that, there's been quite an
(08:26):
increase in that specific measure violent defenses. There were twenty
three thousand more victims in twenty twenty three compared to
twenty twenty two, So his public service goal for twenty
thirty is to reduce the number of victims by twenty thousand,
But that actually isn't very ambitious because he just wants
to dial it back to twenty twenty two levels. As
for the government response to the survey, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith,
(08:49):
he predictably said, well, that's why we need to get
tough on crime, that's why we need longer sentences, that's
why we need to smash the gangs, etc. You know,
even though there are still questions about whether any of
that policy agenda will make a difference.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Three of their key law and order policies are around
reintroducing the three strikes and boot camps for young offenders
and making life more difficult for gangs. Now, is there
any evidence that those policies will actually work well?
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Ministry of Justice officials put the proposed laws through the
ringer and they've give an assessment of these things. When
it comes to the anti gang stuff, the officials were
pretty much a scathing as it gets. You know, there's
no evidence they'll work. They might make things worse by
creating more friction between gangs and the states, and it
might end up in court, you know, if they challenge
(09:48):
for breaching the Bill of Rights acts as far as
three strikes go. They said that there was no significant
quantifiable benefit for a policy that's going to cost millions
of dollars. You know, this is exactly the thing that
Luxen moraled against with labor, where they throw money at
something even though it doesn't work. And those officials also
challenged the government on a number of their favorite law
(10:09):
and order slogans that longer sentences make people safer that
the law is good for Maori because there will be
few Maori victims, that it will deter crimes from happening,
none of which has any evidential basis. Boot camps we've
talked about a lot. You know, there's a bunch of
academic research saying that they're the least effective tool when
it comes to youth offending. They failed in the past
(10:29):
under the last National government under John Key, where the
reoffending rates were north of eighty percent, and where they
have been good it tends to be because of the
support that goes with the programs, nothing to do with
the boot camp model itself, and we've also recently had
all the inconsistency around whether the Defense Force will be involved.
(10:49):
But having said that, you know, none of that means
that the policy of the programs won't work. To say
this that there's no evidence that they worked before doesn't
necessarily mean that they didn't work. You know, three strikes
version one might have stopped one gruesome crime from happening
because someone was in prison for longer, and if that
has happened, then Luxelon would probably say it was worth it.
(11:09):
The problem there is that the crime might have just
been delayed or redirected inside of prison, and that the
harm over that criminal's lifetime hasn't diminished in any way.
I think more generally, there are so many aspects that
make up the crime equation, so it's impossible to say
whether any one policy definitively did this thing to crime levels.
(11:30):
There's also like a bunch of other things happening, like
more visible police on the beat, the Social Investment Program,
for example, a plan to tackle truancy. So you know,
if there was less poverty, less truancy, less homelessness, crime
would almost certainly go down, regardless of whatever policies that
have no evidence behind them are enacted, or even in
(11:51):
spite of them. It's not about gang pictures.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Let's look at the ultimate course and the greatest violence
you can inflict anybody.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It's poverty. That's the ultimate pause.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Clearly, people having their cars stolen and their homes broken
into as a top concern for New Zealander's huge interest
in The Herald's most Burgled street story the other day.
Can those all be blamed on young offenders and gangs?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I suppose, Well, that's quite hard to say, because police
do gather data on crimes committed by people on the
National Gangs List, but it's not publicly available, so it's
not like you control through that data yourself. They released
some stats recently. Gang members make up less than a
quarter of a percent of the whole population, but they
are responsible for sixteen percent of a robberies, eighteen percent
(12:43):
of all serious violent crime, twenty five percent of all kidnapping.
The biggest increases in the last decade were with assaults,
but we know that gang membership has been on the rise,
of some ten thousand gang members at the moment. Youth
crime also has been rising globally following the increase of
social isolation from the pandemic, and looking at youth offenses,
(13:05):
there has been a big jump in theft in burglaries
and robberies, So there's at least some correlation there between
rising youth crime, more gang members and those types of offenses.
You know, we've talked earlier about vehicle thefts being on
the app and home burglaries there, so there's likely a
correlation there. But when you're trying to look at blaming,
(13:26):
you probably need to look at overall what the drivers
of crime are, and that's a very complex intersection of
lots of different things, poverty, housing, health, intergenerational trauma, educational opportunities,
things like that. You know, there's a reason that politicians
keep their slogans simple and snappy, that things are almost
always much more complex than that.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Can we legislate our way out of people getting their
cars stolen or at least maybe put some more money
towards free anti theft devices for car owners or something
to make people safer. Would that be a better use
of the government's money, do you think?
Speaker 3 (14:00):
You know, that's quite hard to say as well, because
a lot of that type of policy is really kind
of crystal ball gazing. One thing that the government is
doing or wanting to do, is to put way more
police on the beat. And we know that police visibility.
I mean, if you're going to go and steal a
car and you see a cop down the road, then
you're probably going to think twice, right, So that's one
way to boost the crime prevention tools. There's also obviously
(14:23):
challenges around that because a bunch of our police are
heading over to Australia and the government wants five hundred
additional police officers by the end of next year. Whether
they get to do that remains to be seen. And
you know, police is also one of those departments that
have had to penny pinch like all the other ones
as well, So you know anti theft devices. I'm not sure.
I haven't really seen any data on how effective those are.
(14:45):
But I mean, if you're going to steal something and
there's a lock across the steering wheel or something, then
and the next car doesn't have one, then you're probably
likely to skip that one and go on to the
next one one.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
In ten Kiwei's experience fraud according to the crime and
Victim surveys.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Look is this really for real?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
And they said absolutely, there's no question in your our
minds that you have been scammed.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
And then they say them, we can't recover it. Asb
told Tim, his money was gone too. How much money
had you invested?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I invested four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
It's a feeling of complete and utter loss, devastation, worse
day of my life.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Why aren't we hearing more from the government about tackling
this issue when it's one of the most dominant unreported crimes.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Well, if I'm being cynical, in short, I would just
say that there aren't really many votes there. Fraud is
the most common crime in New Zealand now it has
doubled the proportion of Kiwi's experience for it has doubled
in the last six years. But it's not something that
really makes a lot of headlines. It doesn't make people's
skin crawl. I guess when they're sitting at home watching TV,
safe in their homes after work. You know, it doesn't
(15:57):
stir up the kind of fear that makes people go
to the ballot box and vote.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
What about family and domestic harm? This is a persistent
issue in this country and it doesn't appear to be
on top of any priority list, does it.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
No, that's right, and it's been a bit of an
issue this year because police have said that they're stepping
back from low level family violence callouts because they aren't
and shouldn't be the state's tool for non crime social problems.
But if nothing steps in there to fill that void,
you know, those situations can easily escalate into more problematic
ones and family violence. You know, it's a plague in
(16:31):
New Zealand. But again being cynical here, those populations aren't
really ones that vote very much, so it's not going
to be as naturally on politicians, radar as other things
that grab headlines and make people go to the ballot box.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And given the rates of crime have barely changed in
recent years, is the government fighting a losing battle to
try and make us safer when it seems people's feelings
don't really reflect reality anyway?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
I think you know, the government will see it self
is winning if what they're doing resonates with the public.
Right So if they're seem to be doing something, you know,
the stuff that people are rightly or wrongly worried about,
and that's youth crime. So they've got their boot camps,
it's gangs, so they have their anti gang legislation. People
think that sentences are two light. Surveys have shown that
(17:19):
multiple times, so they're going to lengthen sentences. So whether
they work or not is almost secondary. I mean, look
at making it an aggravating factor. If you hit the cornerdiry,
how many robbers are going to go into the corner
diiry and look to see if there's more than one
worker in there or if there's a home attached to it.
Which are the factors that would make it an aggravating
factor of sentencing. You know, no one's probably going to
(17:40):
look at those things. That doesn't mean it doesn't look
like the government isn't doing something to protect a sector
of society who's rightly been set up with the RAM
rays and the use attacks and the robberies. So a
government can point to all the things that they're doing
and they can give themselves a big tick as long
as it resonates with the public. Of course, if crime
then drops and people feel safe, that's obviously great, But
(18:02):
there's so many things that go into that crime equation,
and so it's impossible to say whether any policy is
responsible for that. Of course, things could also get a
lot worse, and they haven't over the last six years
according to that crime and Victim survey. But if they
do get a lot worse, then people will ultimately get disillusioned,
feel less and less safe. But for the moment, that
is a hypothetical problem for a second term.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Thanks for joining us, Derek. That's it for this episode
of the Front Page. You can read more about today's
stories and extensive news coverage at enzet Herald dot co
dot z. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals
with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to
(18:48):
the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
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