As our moral fabric disintegrates

At Pukenui, near Ninety Mile Beach, far from any crime-infested city streets, Mrs Win Webb worries about her grandchildren.

"I go back to when we were only kids, we had a good life," she says. "There were no robberies, there were no home invasions. Over the last 20 years all that has got worse. I have seen a deterioration."

In Aotea Square in the heart of Auckland, doing the Herald crossword in her lunch-hour, 60-year-old secretary Margaret Bellandie is equally concerned.

"If you think 20 years ago there was one murder a year, now it's every day or so. You never saw banks being robbed. I try not to be a pessimist, but it's very difficult."

From North Cape to Invercargill, New Zealanders perceive that the moral fabric of their country is crumbling.

"All the killings and stabbings, that's all you hear on the news," says Hastings mother Rachel Brown, 24.

"I don't let my daughter out of my sight," says Mandy, 29, in Tauranga. "Ten years ago you could let your kid walk to the shop. Now you can't."

Moira Cossar, 30, of Greymouth, says: "We've been having home invasions, it's actually starting on the Coast!"

In the aftermath of tragic murders such as those of pizza shop worker Marcus Doig and bank teller John Vaughan, there is no way politicians can avoid the crime issue . And there is no doubt that over the long term, crime has got worse.

In 1951, there were just five murders in New Zealand.

In 2001, there were 53. Even taking 10-year averages and adjusting the figures to a standard rate per 4 million people (approximately the present population), murders trebled from 20 a year for every 4 million people in the 1950s to 62.8 a year in the 90s.

Politicians have responded by hiring far more police. But people want still more and, especially, much tougher penalties for criminals.

"They should have hard labour, not three meals a day - not back to the ball and chain, but a good example would be the American work gangs cleaning up roads and drains," says 55-year-old Peter Clements in the West Coast town of Runanga.

Many complained that 92 per cent of people voted for tougher sentences on criminals in a referendum in 1999, yet, as Waimauku operations manager Ken Donnell puts it, the Government "absolutely ignored it".

"The criminal gets everything. The victim gets nothing," he says.

People also want to create a community that does not drive people to crime in the first place. Tauranga secretary Lorraine Davies, 54, would start with better mental health care.

"The amount of money going into hospitals and mental health and the police is not good enough, judging by what's going on in New Zealand with the amount of people who need help for their mental conditions," she says.

Kirsten Smith, a 20-year-old Christchurch student, suggests halfway houses to help ex-prisoners "to adjust themselves back into society instead of being dumped back into society and not knowing any better".

Even better in the long term might be jobs. As Cambridge dairy worker Alex Martinson puts it: "Give them an education and something to do, a trade, and I think it's better for the country.

"Once people have got money, life gets better for them."