Bob Jones: Tagging hardly a victimless crime

Ross Goode, right, was last week found responsible for more than 800 acts of vandalism in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell

Parliament should give courts more teeth to address this wilful malicious vandalism of strangers’ property.

There's a Hawkes Bay judge whose name I've forgotten, but who deserves a statue erected of him for outstanding public service. A couple of years back he threw a piece of garbage in prison for a month for repeated tagging, this a euphemism for wilful malicious vandalism to strangers' property.

Under the Summary Offences Act the maximum penalty is a grossly inadequate fine of $2000 and/or a community service sentence. The judge bypassed this wishy washy soft-soaping by nailing the flotsam before him for contempt, for ignoring previous court orders to desist.

That's open to all judges if they displayed similar initiative. The Crimes Act provides penalties for up to seven years' imprisonment for wilful property damage, and is long overdue to charge graffiti offenders under that act.

Currently, on the evidence I've garnered, this senseless crime costs the nation's local bodies circa $15 million annually in repairs. But that figure is merely the tip of the iceberg, pertaining as it does solely to council repair activities, with many people and companies doing their own repairs.

Then there's the huge expense of attempted prevention. For example, the Greater Wellington Regional Council spent $3 million recently, setting up cameras at suburban train stations, specifically to target graffiti vandals. These have an ongoing monitoring cost of $1.1 million a year. Half of this is being met by central government (that's your pocket).

But even that is largely futile. After three months, 300 tagging incidents were recorded but only 10 arrests achieved. Then there's graffiti on trains which railway companies say costs an average of $6000 an item to fix.

There are heaps of other non-repair costs, such as the Justice Department's brochures on prevention and similar material from the police and individual councils and of course, staff salaries for those involved.

The police have set up special divisions and have forensic analysts expert in graffiti patterns to trace offenders. So it would be no surprise if a full assessment showed the financial cost to the nation is at least in the order of $50 million a year, and possibly much more. I say financial as there's another much sadder cost, namely the unnecessary heartbreak to victims.

A week ago the Herald reported the prosecution of a 25-year-old piece of garbage called Ross James Goode, described as one of Auckland's most prolific taggers. He is responsible for more than 800 acts of vandalism over the past three years. Their removal has cost ratepayers $26,000.

"Jail time is a clear possibility," Judge Grant Fraser told this Goode swine, but called for a probation report.

"A clear possibility"! That's preposterous. The judge should lock this vermin up for the seven years' maximum and not be beguiled by a probation report saying Goode's a bit simple, as the article's accompanying photo plainly indicated.

"Concerned about a jail sentence?" a Herald reporter asked Goode. "Nah," it uttered, which said everything. Hopefully Goode will go down, and if precedent is any guide, while incarcerated will be subject to some personal pointless vandalism, a deserved taste of its own medicine.

I've mentioned the financial toll but the real cost is much deeper than that. As a nation we place high priority on home ownership. With that goes pride of ownership manifesting itself, no matter how humble the abode, in the immense satisfaction of presenting one's property as attractively as possible. So too with our CBDs with their high-rises and public buildings which collectively symbolise our image of our cities.

Then along slopes the Goode no-hoper with his aerosol can, hell-bent on reducing people's enhancement efforts to tears. When a few years ago a South Auckland victim pursued an offender in the act of disfiguring his neatly painted fence, then caught and attacked him resulting in his death, there was a considerable outpouring of sympathy. Not for the deceased but instead for his victim who now found himself before the courts, his life irrevocably harmed by an action he never instigated.

While one has no sympathy for any criminal, what's unique about graffiti is its implicit cruelty. A bank robber, for example, has a rational motive, namely financial profit. That doesn't justify the offence but it does explain it. But there's neither justification nor explanation for graffiti's banality, instead it's a particularly vile act against not just the particular victims but the whole of society, in despoiling individual efforts to achieve a visual outcome from which we all collectively benefit.

Try as I might I cannot imagine how there can be any satisfaction from this behaviour. Graffiti vandals by their despicable actions are declaring war on society and deserve no mercy. Parliament should enact clear and specific, severe jail-time penalties, with no leeway for judges to exercise moderation, failing which we will never stamp out this abomination.