Inside the biggest crime stories of 2024.
Law and order is always a hot topic of debate for politicians and society alike.
The coalition Government was elected partly due to promises made to clean up the country’s act - after years of ram raids and violent robberies post-Covid.
The past 12 months have seen the resurrection of “bootcamps” for young offenders, a crackdown on gangs, and the return of Three Strikes legislation.
This year the Herald’s daily news podcast, The Front Page, has had many conversations about crime in New Zealand - with politicians, experts, Herald journalists, and those on the ground.
And it’s the first topic of the podcast’s compilation episodes looking back on the year that was.
First, the podcast revisits a conversation from July with Herald senior reporter Derek Cheng about what data tells us about how much crime is happening – and how unsafe we feel.
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.
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,” he said.
Youth offenders have been in the crosshairs of this new government, with bootcamps being reintroduced despite previous attempts by earlier National governments not delivering shining results.
In October, a rooftop protest by 13 offenders at a youth justice facility raised the question, once again, of whether we’re handling these cases properly.
The Front Page spoke to youth worker and founder of Kick Back youth development, Aaron Hendry, to get some insight into the lives of our youngest offenders.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell is one of the politicians responsible for overseeing law and order in New Zealand.
He joined The Front Page in May in the wake of the Government announcing a new task force designed to make life difficult for gangs in this country.
“We want it to be as miserable as possible and as tough as possible to exist as a violent gang member peddling drugs and violence and all the harm and misery that they bring to our communities. We want it to be so tough they want to leave the gang and find a way of rejoining society in a positive way,” he said.
The announcement followed a rise in gang violence, including the fatal shooting of a man on Auckland’s Ponsonby Rd by a Killer Beez gang member.
Being tough on crime isn’t just a focus here in New Zealand.
Back in June, a new policy came into effect in Australia that once again cracked down on 501s – criminals who had been born in New Zealand but spent most of their lives in Australia.
Road 2 Redemption founder and former “501”, Mark Talanoa, joined The Front Page at the time to discuss his experiences with this system.
While politicians are focused on gangs and ram raiders, recent surveys have shown that one in 10 New Zealanders are believed to have experienced some type of fraud.
The Front Page caught up with NZ Herald investigative reporter Matt Nippert about this in September.
Regardless of what type of crime you commit, most roads in our justice system lead towards our prisons.
Earlier this year, a scathing report from outgoing Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier slammed our country’s prison system as “unproductive and unwilling to change”.
To respond, in April The Front Page spoke to the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons, Neil Beales, to get his response to those comments and his thoughts on the state of Corrections.
Listen to the full episode to hear highlights from these conversations about crime from 2024.
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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