Mike Munro: Parties battle it out on reducing crime - it must be election year

Another ram-raid victim - in this case the East Tamaki Supermarket in Auckland. Photo / Hayden Woodward

OPINION

I received an email this week from a friend in London who was alarmed to open The Times and see the headline “Tougher policing ‘won’t fix New Zealand gangs crisis’”.

Worried that we might be on the verge of descending into anarchy, he wanted to know if the situation was as serious as the story indicated.

I assured him we weren’t quite going to hell in a handcart and that the article was based on yet another expert’s report telling us what we should already know – namely, that a heavy-handed crackdown on ornery gangs won’t work.

It was also necessary to point out that an election is nigh and that politicians towards the reactionary end of the spectrum are feasting on the public anxiety generated by high-profile gang incidents and other criminal acts.

It calls to mind something David Lange once said about law and order becoming the subject of “muddle-headed demagoguery” as elections near.

What he meant is that appealing vengefully to the fears and prejudices of voters is much simpler than using rational argument.

And it’s the National Party, utterly indifferent to any evidence that shows its law and order policies are unworkable, that has charged to the lead in the 2023 vengeance stakes. They won’t allow reason and science to deter them, no, not on your nelly.

Military-style boot camps. Banning gang insignia. Powers for police to break up public gatherings. Restoring the Three Strikes policy. A tougher lock-’em-up sentencing regime. Axing Labour’s goal of reducing the prison headcount by 30 per cent. Dumping state funding for defendants’ cultural reports.

Readers of The Times could be forgiven for thinking we’re out to rival Margaret Thatcher’s “short, sharp shock” methods in 1980s Britain.

The Nats aren’t bothered that some of what they’re promising is already being legislated for, such as remand prisoners getting access to rehabilitation services. And they’re shameless about poaching their potential partner’s ideas: reinstating Three Strikes and scrapping government funding for cultural reports, two of their recent announcements, are straight out of the Act playbook.

What will also be motivating National’s chest-beating approach is the need to deny NZ First and Act any oxygen on this issue. Act’s ideas for holding youth offenders accountable at least appear to have been researched.

Winston Peters has yet to start his election run in earnest, but when he does it will be safe to assume that he’ll be beating the law and order drum with gusto, as is his wont.

So National, not wanting to have to rely on NZ First making up the numbers for a centre-right government, is looking to take ownership of the law and order issue by outbidding all others.

Meantime, the evidence just keeps on coming that, so far as gangs are concerned, there are no quick fixes and that hardline measures create more problems than they resolve. This week it was a report – the one that featured in The Times – from the PM’s chief science adviser on how to reduce gang harm.

The report concluded that we can’t arrest our way out of the problem, a better path being to focus on the underlying social issues that drive gang membership. That means looking at inequity, intergenerational trauma, housing and family violence. Children are born into gangs and breaking the cycle is hard, but we have to give it a try.

Phooey to all that, says National. We need more stick and less carrot.

The Government tries valiantly to demonstrate that it isn’t as soft as National portrays it to be: on Labour’s watch there have been an extra 1800 cops, 700 of them now working on organised crime; 1000 search warrants executed; some 30,000 charges laid, with many of the arrested being gang members; hundreds of firearms seized.

And after a post-Covid spike in crime – a worldwide occurrence because of higher truancy rates and financial hardship – real crime rates for many offences have fallen, or are at least flatlining. What’s more, youth offending rates have dropped by 65 per cent over the past 10 years.

But it seems you can’t tell that to anyone.

There’s a perception that things are out of control and, as Police Minister Ginny Andersen knows, it’s difficult to counter that notion.

Police Minister Ginny Andersen faces a widespread perception that crime rates are out of control. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Media channels, both mainstream and social, are awash with criminality. Television viewers are fed a steady diet of horror stories, and social platforms are quick to share the latest frightful content. This week it was someone getting bashed in a youth facility.

There is plenty of distressing footage thanks to contributed video, CCTV cameras, offenders posting their misdemeanours online, and intrepid media.

On the TV3 evening news on Sunday, a Newshub cameraman’s video diary of serious crimes in Auckland was deemed important enough to run as the bulletin’s second story. The operator ventures out most nights to record the aftermath of ram raids, shootings, stabbings and robberies. He deserves full marks for initiative.

Crime has become a kind of grotesque freak show for primetime viewers. Caved-in shopfronts and irate shopkeepers are almost nightly fare. So too are images of patched gang members in the streets, lording it over other citizens.

It all helps to whip the public into a state of fear and, as psychologists will tell you, fear and anger are the most closely associated emotions. So people are irritably demanding of the Government: “Whadda you going to do about it?”

The Government will continue to say it’s doing quite a bit, but it’s likely it will have to slake the public thirst for more punitive action and announce some form of get-tough policy, to show it’s listening.

Its heart won’t be in it, but it’s what the public mood demands, as National understands.

There is, after all, an election in less than 100 days.

- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.