Political auction on law and order

By Andrew Laxon

political reporter

The law-and-order debate turned into a frenzied political auction yesterday as Labour, Act and National tried to outbid one another with tough stands on crime.

Labour announced its crime policy, including performance targets for police - with a heavy emphasis on catching burglars - and fingerprinting for child offenders as young as 10.

Act responded an hour later with a bill forcing criminals to spend at least 80 per cent of their sentences behind bars, instead of the present 66 per cent maximum.

Meanwhile, National accused Labour of stealing its crime policies to win votes.

Labour retorted that National had already stolen many of its ideas in the Government's law-and-order crackdown of the past few weeks.

Labour's justice spokesman, Phil Goff, and police spokesman, George Hawkins, said the party would scrap the present system that made the police spend a set number of hours a year on various tasks.

It would instead set crime-reduction targets, which would help the police to tackle a 90 per cent increase in violent crime since 1990 and an 89 per cent growth in the unsolved burglary rate.

Mr Goff confirmed that police commanders would be sacked if they failed to reduce crime in their areas, following the lead of New York's "zero tolerance" policing.

Last month, National's new Minister of Justice, Tony Ryall, promised the same policy, even though the Minister of Police, Clem Simich, had earlier dismissed calls for zero tolerance.

Yesterday, Labour made no firm promises to increase police numbers to achieve its crime-reduction aims. Mr Goff said Labour would first wait to see what savings resulted from the police's new computer system.

The Labour crime policy also promises an overhaul of legislation to close the market for stolen goods at secondhand shops.

Mr Goff said the "totally out-of-date" Secondhand Dealers Act 1963 covered "field glasses, furs, gramophones and radiograms, overcoats, raincoats and men's suits, travelling rugs and typewriters."

It did not mention any of the things stolen from his house 18 months ago and in most burglaries today, such as television sets, computer games and video recorders.

As well as allowing the police to fingerprint young offenders, Labour would allow them to deliver instant punishments with parental consent to youngsters caught in crimes such as graffiti vandalism.

The punishment could be a curfew or joining a graffiti cleanup team under parental supervision. That would also free the courts to deal with more serious cases.

Mr Goff said Labour would change family group conferences for young offenders, which suffered from long delays and inadequate followup.

Act leader Richard Prebble said his private member's bill would change the present law which allowed inmates to be released after two-thirds of their sentence and after only half if their term was less than 12 months.

The Act proposal would almost double the average sentence and almost triple some others, forcing the country to build more prisons.

This would cost an extra $242 million a year - double the present bill for all prisoners - if there was no drop in the crime rate.

But, based on the United States experience of falling crime rates through longer sentences, he estimated the extra cost at $80 million.