On May 24 last year, 54-year-old Blessie Gotingco got off a bus in Birkdale on Auckland's North Shore and started a short walk home. Other than working late, it was a normal day until she was hit by a car, raped and killed before her body was dumped in scrub at Eskdale Cemetery.
In the public mind, killings like this confirm the troubling notion of a violent society becoming more violent. But it isn't. In fact, it's getting considerably safer.
Murder is an interesting measure for social scientists. It is less encumbered by the vagaries affecting other crime data: it is almost always reported and it is generally unaffected by changes in policing or public emphasis, meaning that murder statistics offer a reliable foundation upon which one can build sound conclusions.
One such conclusion is this: you are significantly less likely to be murdered now than in any of the last three decades. One has to go back to when Norman Kirk was in office in 1973 to find the beginning of a five-year period to rival the one we are in. Many people won't believe that. Most New Zealanders think violent crime is on the rise. A 2013 Department of Justice study found 9 per cent of people correctly thought violent crime was decreasing. That leaves an alarming number of misinformed people, and it's easy to understand why.
Dancing to the easy tune of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, whose membership's admirable intent is dwarfed by a distinct lack of intellectual curiosity, successive governments, assisted by an often-lazy media, have sought electoral advantage through a "tough on crime" rhetoric and in doing so have created public perceptions of a soaring crime problem.
