Rodney Hide: If police are too busy, then we need a whole lot more

Rodney Hide

Not long ago a South Auckland dairy-owner came under siege from young criminals. The thieves walked in and took what they wanted. The dairy-owner knew who they were and where they lived. But the police did nothing.

They wrote to the dairy-owner saying they were too busy and had filed his complaint. The neighbouring storekeepers had given up complaining a long time before. What can police be so busy doing?

Police Minister George Hawkins, on Monday's Perspectives page, told us crime was coming down and police numbers were going up.

Hang on. Crime down; police numbers up. How can they be too busy? The answer is that our police are overstretched combating ever-increasing violent crime.

Under Labour reported violent crime has increased 14 per cent. After I raised the dairy-owner's plight, the police said they were just pleased they had managed to write to him. They had rape cases they could not investigate because they did not have the manpower.

But that's only part of the problem. Each year the Minister of Police negotiates an agreement with the Commissioner of Police that contains targets for the numbers of tickets police are expected to issue.

The Police Commissioner's performance is assessed against, among other things, whether police issue that number of tickets. The responsibility gets passed down the chain. There is no responsibility for reducing violent crime but there is responsibility for issuing a certain number of traffic tickets.

So the police make sure they do what the Government has told them to do. None of this is any comfort to our dairy-owner, whom police are too busy to help.

The young thugs targeting his store are given a clear message about the Government's attitude to law and order: it does not care if they steal as long as they keep within the speed limit.

Under the Government's soft-on-crime policies, New Zealanders suffer one of the highest crime rates in the developed world.

The new Sentencing Act instructs judges to go for a non-custodial sentence if they can. For those unlucky enough to get a custodial sentence, the majority automatically get their sentence cut in half by the Parole Act.

So, two years' jail really means 12 months' jail. Hundreds of these people apply for and are granted home detention.

And despite all the talk about rehabilitation, a high number of those released from prison reoffend within a short time. A recent census of prison inmates asked how many previous terms of imprisonment inmates had. Many had more than 10. Three had more than 50.

It is difficult to comprehend how someone can be jailed 50 separate times. Yet a parole board somewhere sincerely believes that he's no longer a risk to the community after his 51st stint inside.

In reality, despite a few headline crimes attracting longer sentences, the justice system operates very much like a revolving door. The police, stretched as thin as they are, find they are invariably catching the same scumbags again and again.

Think of the savings if the Government did the job properly. The police would catch them once every three or four years, instead of two or three times. Think how many fewer victims there would be.

Policing matters. So does sentencing. We need more police and we need active policing. The police must be out and about policing the streets, our homes and our places of work. Their attitude must change: no more band-aid policing but zero-tolerance policing.

That means police act on all crimes, no matter how small. It is about sending a message that society will not tolerate crime of any sort, petty crime included.

Under Act's zero-tolerance policy, it will no longer be acceptable to say to criminals their crime is okay because the police are busy investigating stuff that is more serious. And we need punishment that matches the crime. Not this wet bus ticket stuff.

Act will abolish parole. If the judge sentences people to two years' jail, they will serve two years' jail.

This doesn't mean a doubling of prison costs. For a start, there's the deterrent effect of the truth-in-sentencing policy. This will mean fewer crimes committed. Remember, too, many crimes are committed by repeat offenders on parole. Without parole, these crimes won't happen.

Instead of serving two half-sentences for two offences, offenders will simply serve one whole one for one offence - same jail time, but one less victim.

In fact, international evidence indicates an effective doubling of sentences only leads to a 50 per cent increase in inmate numbers and resulting costs.

New Zealand also needs more police. It spends less than 1 per cent of gross domestic product on police. Even with funding for another 2000 police, it would still be under 1 per cent.

* Rodney Hide is responding to the view of the Police Minister George Hawkins that widespread criticism of the police does not tally with a big fall in recorded crime.