Time to look into the shadow

By Andrew Stone

Six months ago, Police Minister Clem Simich soothingly assured New Zealanders that fears about rising crime were unfounded.

"We still live in a safe country," he insisted, producing the latest police statistics, showing recorded crime down 2.5 per cent last year.

But a dark shadow which Mr Simich did not mention is falling over the land. For thousands of families, for women, children and young men, New Zealand is anything but a safe country.

The Weekend Herald has revealed British Home Office figures showing New Zealand has the highest rate of violent crime in the developed world, eclipsing Canada, Australia and even the United States. We lock up our worst young men in their thousands.

Of the 5000 offenders behind bars, around 2700 are doing time for violence.

Then there is our home life. Every week for the past three years, the Family Court has dealt with on average 154 protection orders - injunctions making it an offence to lay a finger on a partner.

Over the same time, the criminal courts have prosecuted 25,000 cases of domestic violence.

Perhaps the real tragedy in this bleak catalogue lies in the numbers of children exposed to a storm of domestic violence.

For it is in these young bodies and brains that the cycle is being repeated as children grow up in a battle zone of trauma and fear.

It is against the law to let children witness violence, physical or psychological - yet last year women's refuges around the country sheltered 10,000 children.

Policymakers know these grim numbers. Politicians have started grappling with them. But the rumbling within the nation's social volcano shows little sign of ceasing.

The biggest intervention programme is Family Start, designed to help vulnerable families and stem abuse and neglect. Regarded by experts as a vital service, its $41 million three-year budget limits its reach to 2700 families.

The 1996 census says New Zealand has up to 40,000 families in dire circumstances.

A similar Government scheme in Israel gets $50 million a year.

Children's advocate Lesley Max believes New Zealand is in danger of entrenching the gaps between those who succeed and those who fail.

She sees the country as being in a desperate holding pattern, with the level of violence threatening the maintenance of civil society, and wonders if New Zealand has lost its capacity for constructive outrage.

"We can forget the knowledge economy or competing in the world economy," she says.

"Kids raised in violence can't learn. They can't contribute to the prosperity we want, and they can harm the prospects of others."

She believes an honest debate about personal and family behaviour is long overdue, but questions whether New Zealand has the maturity to peel back the covers.

New Zealand has come late to addressing the causes of violent crime, despite what amounts to a violence industry which picks up the pieces and rounds up perpetrators.

The Domestic Violence Act, which set up anti-violence programmes for offenders and victims, is only four years old. Only late last year did the Ministry of Health issue guidelines on putting abused and beaten patients in touch with support agencies.

The intervention budget is insignificant when compared with the taxpayer investment in road safety, yet the economic impact of violence and road crashes is similar.

Road crashes cost about $3 billion last year, says the Land Transport Safety Authority. The latest authority-police road safety programme,which includes graphic television advertising and on-the-road enforcement, has a budget of $169 million.

Over the past three years, the Government has spent $11 million on programmes to reduce violent offending and make schools and homes safer.

What help exists is often short of money and reliant on volunteers, who say they are swamped by demand.

The taxpayer money has gone on intervention, such as the Department of Courts' $5.2 million "stopping violence" programmes. No research exists to show whether these work.

Edith McNeill, a member of the ministerial family violence advisory committee, wonders how New Zealand can invest millions on politically safe health campaigns to cut smoking or overeating, yet ignore the social costs of violence.

The issue concerns the Governor-General, Sir Michael Hardie Boys. He recently told a conference on family violence that New Zealand seemed to face two options.

"We can galvanise ourselves and, in spite of the damage done, we can take steps to prevent further injury; we can respond, and respond effectively.

"Or we can acknowledge, intellectually, that our environment is becoming less and less benign, but make no effective response."