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The Coalition Government’s crackdown on crime is in full swing - as figures show people are feeling more unsafe despite crime rates remaining steady.
The sixth New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey found 31.5% of New Zealanders experienced at least one crime incident in the year to October 2023.
This was the highest rate across the survey’s six years but the figure has remained steady, oscillating between 31.5% and 29% since 2018.
NZ Herald senior political reporter Derek Cheng told The Front Page despite the steady crime rate, fewer people are feeling safe.
“That’s gone from 9% to 15% over the last six years with the biggest jump occurring between 2022 and 2023 and it’s also for victims and non-victims.
“It’s not uncommon for feelings of safety to not necessarily reflect the amount of crime that’s going on and there are lots of factors that are potentially at play there.
“For example, the proportion of Asian New Zealanders feeling unsafe doubled from 11% to 22% over that time, and the survey suggested that racism during COVID might have contributed to that,” he said.
An Ipsos poll showed most New Zealanders have witnessed vandalism, vehicle theft, and burglaries in the past year.
Vehicle theft topped the list with 61%, followed by burglaries (57%) and vandalism (56%).
This week the Herald mapped locations of most of the 182,379 burglaries reported in the last four years - an average of one every 12 minutes.
“The Ipsos survey was global, they also talked to a thousand New Zealanders. They didn’t do it for New Zealand last year, so you can’t compare years, but it has a unique question: have you seen or heard this particular thing in your neighbourhood in the past 12 months?”
The Government’s committed to passing four pieces of law and order legislation in the next quarter as part of its Q3 Action Plan for New Zealand.
It includes allowing police to confiscate firearms, the banning of gang patches, and more rehabilitation for on-remand prisoners.
Luxon hoped the relevant legislation on police powers to target gangs would be passed in August or September. Police would then work out how enforcement would work with powers likely to be available to police in October or November.
Cheng told The Front Page the Ministry of Justice has put a few of the proposed laws “through the ringer”.
“When it comes to the anti-gang laws, the officials were pretty much as scathing as it gets [saying] here’s no evidence they’ll work, they might make things worse by creating more friction between gangs and the state.
“As far as [the return of] the Three Strikes legislation goes, they said that there was no significant quantifiable benefit for a policy that’s going to cost millions of dollars.
“but having said that, you know, none of that means that the policies of the programs won’t work. To say that there’s no evidence that they worked before doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t work.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more about the Government’s plan to curb crime and whether the data backs it up.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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