Worsening crime ramraids its way into being a top election issue

Friday, 8 September 2023

The target was a gas station, dairy, sports store. The weapon of choice, a stolen vehicle. The perpetrators, teenagers, one as young as 14.

Armed police closed in on the “highly-organised” group before dawn on a Friday morning, executing four search warrants, ending a month-long crime spree and charging eight teenagers with aggravated robbery, burglary, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle and participating in an organised crime group.

But this was just one ramraid outfit behind a spate of retail crime plaguing Waikato.

Later in the month two youths were caught after ramraiding a sports store with a stolen Mazda Demio. A group of older men, in their 20s and 30s, were before the court for a series of ramraids a month before the armed police raids. And later in the year, an attempted ram raid of a Cambridge sports store mostly failed, the hole smashed in the shopfront not big enough.

These are now familiar stories, highly-public crimes that the National Party and ACT have been hammering as an issue over and over, for months. The Labour Government has been scrambling to show it’s doing more – on Thursday, it announced that it wanted to hire another 300 police officers, and would create law to halt “disruptive” gang convoys, if elected in October.

But the difference? All of these raids and arrests described occurred in 2017.

There is nothing new about ramraiding. As the National government headed into the 2017 election it was trying to assuage the concerns of dairy owners; Labour was talking of serious crime rising “rapidly”. A Government scheme was set up to install bollards and fog cannons in retailers.

The roles have now reversed – Labour was earlier this year re-engineering a fog cannon scheme – but the issue has remained the same.

However, unlike in 2017, when poverty and housing and mental health crises dominated, crime is now among the top issues of concern to voters this election. An Ipsos issues monitoring poll in June found it New Zealanders’ second-most concern, behind a rising cost of living.

The Opposition has been insisting on asking: do you want a Government “tough” or “soft” on crime? Labour has been sharpening its rhetoric in response.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins on Thursday announced the latest in a series of policy pledges aimed at demonstrating his party has a grip on the issue.

He promised a future Labour government would hire 3000 additional police officers – the party finally made good on a promise to boost police numbers by 1800 last year – to create “the best ratio of police to population in modern history”.

A new law to crack down on gang “convoys”, typically funeral processions which cause considerable disruption, would also be introduced, he said. It follows a number of other laws Labour has promised to create to target ramraiders.

“The police have been doing a great job of following up on youth offending, they've also been doing a great job of making sure that they’re cracking down on gang activity,” Hipkins said, when announcing the policy in Hamilton.

'It will mean that the police have more people out on the beat who can follow up on those crimes. But that's not the only thing that we're doing. We also want to get those young people out of the cycle of crime. I don't want those young people doing that offending in the first place.”

National Party police spokesperson Mark Mitchell said that four years ago Labour “laughed” at National’s suggestion there was a need to clamp down on gangs.

'We see headlines just about every week on gangs taking over public spaces, intimidating, and threatening members of the public, or serious gang-related assaults and homicides. This Labour Government is not credible on law and order, and this is quite simply cynical, knee-jerk reaction trying to give themselves credibility.

“I just don't think Kiwis buy it, and I think most Kiwis don't trust the Labour Party in terms of the safety.”

Whether that’s true depends on how you look at the issue.

Rising crime, or rising fear?

To get a taste of the political debate over crime, look to how the National Party has been pressing Police Minister Ginny Andersen over the issue in the House for months – slamming Labour with statistics and repeated questioning about whether New Zealanders feel safer.

“What does the minister think Kiwis will think when they see the police minister having a laugh while there has been a 30% increase in violent crime; a 40% increase in victimisations; a 60% increase in mental health crisis callouts; a 70% increase in gang membership; a 100% increase in retail crime … ,” asked Mitchell, on the last day of the parliamentary term, a week ago.

“I absolutely do not think that crime is funny, but what I do think is that that member's performance during question time in this House since May has been a joke,” Andersen retorted.

Statistics about crime can be cut in numerous ways, and it’s not easy getting an overall picture because there are different methods of recording offending, and not all crime is reported.

But a dataset provided by police shows that, when it comes to six crime types – assault, sexual assault, abduction, robbery, burglary, and theft – there has been an increase in “victimisations” in the year to June 2023, compared with the year before.

Overall there were 66,371 more victimisations recorded, and of these, 60,333 were burglaries and theft.

A growing problem with other types of crime is less clear-cut. There has been a recorded rise in violent crime according to the victimisation measure, though this is a fraction of the rise in property crimes.

A lift in the number of gang members has occurred, but the Government and police say the figures quoted by National aren’t entirely accurate, as they come from an intelligence database that captures a broader range of people than is expected to be active gang members.

The Labour Government does acknowledge, however, that gang numbers have increased and, in part due to hardened gang members being deported from Australia to New Zealand, there has been an increase in violent gang conflict.

But the issue is broader than just how much crime there is. It’s also about how criminals are managed once convicted.

For instance, electronic monitoring of both people on bail and criminals on community-based sentences has grown considerably under Labour, as it has aimed to reduce the prison population (Labour says National started this policy in its last days of office).

Corrections says that in June 2017, there were 3928 people under such monitoring, and in June 2023 there were 6251.

The amount of crime committed while offenders are on community-based sentences has not risen – in 2021-22 the number of people on home detention charged with a crime was 1336, fewer than in 2016-17 – but there have been some high-profile examples of this. Notably, Matu Reid, who killed two people in a shooting in the Auckland CBD.

National and ACT say these numbers, and the public sentiment about crime, are a result of the Government being “soft” on crime; Labour’s policies send signals to the judiciary and criminals to ease off on harsher punishments.

Labour contends that, overall, crime is trending downward, points to its work to bolster the police force, and acknowledges the “unacceptable” spike in youth and retail crime. Nonetheless, it has also played to public sentiment.

Political point scoring and policies

Over four or more months, some 17 times over, Mitchell stood up in the House and asked Andersen the same question, predicated on a partial quote: “Does she stand by her statement, ‘It is my view that New Zealanders feel safer’; if so, why?”

Mitchell has spearheaded National’s effort to cast Labour as “soft” on crime, pushing a “tough on crime” message and proposing a raft of policies aimed at youth offenders and gang members, and is also promising tougher sentences.

National wants to create a “young serious offender” criminal category so that 10 to 17-year-olds who commit multiple serious offences can face tougher punishment. It wants to ban gang patches and give police powers to break up gang gatherings.

And the party used its annual conference this year to announce a suite of justice policies, including limiting the discount judges can apply to sentences to 40%, and providing rehabilitation to prisoners serving time on remand.

ACT has policies aimed at having a similar effect. It wants to change the law that guides sentencing decisions: prioritising risk to the community and the potential of re-victimisation, over a need to provide “the least restrictive” sentence.

This means a National-ACT government effectively guarantees there will be more criminals sent to prison. How much this will cost neither party can say.

Not that Labour wants you to think it’s opposed to being tough. Seeking to shore up the party’s own tough-on-crime credentials, Hipkins held a law and order week in July to announce three days’ worth of policies.

Labour will make rewarding a child to commit a crime an “aggravating factor” in criminal sentencing, a measure aimed at targeting adults who encourage youth offending. There was also a promise to build two new youth justice facilities, and to pass leglislation that will allow police to prosecute children above 12 years of age for ramraiding.

As with National, Labour is planning to provide rehabilitation to remand prisoners – those who are locked up awaiting trial or sentencing.

Crime has also played an important role in the campaign of NZ First, which is aspiring to re-enter Parliament. Leader Winston Peters is promising, like National, to make being part of a gang an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing – something Labour says is already part of existing legislation.

Both the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori are more concerned with social justice than criminal justice; crime and justice hasn’t been a major policy platform.

The Green Party talks of high-level principles: promoting restorative justice, eliminating discrimination and preventing the over-representation of Māori and Pasifika youth within the system. Te Pāti Māori hasn’t promoted any specific justice policies.

Meaning, when it comes to the next government, it’s mostly a question of what version of “tough”-on-crime you believe in. Whether the policies work, or ramraids are making headlines six years from now, is another question entirely.