Police minister rejects tough-on-crime rhetoric

Police Minister Chris Hipkins’ acknowledgement of retail crime “particularly in the upper half of North Island,” becoming “a real concern for the whole country” is a public endorsement of an everyday reality for the victims of ram raids and burglaries occurring in (but not limited to) Auckland.

But there were more areas of divergence, than convergence, in the minister’s kerbside interface with media and business owners in Mt Roskill on October 19.

There was no clear agreement on raising the corpus of the Small Retailer Crime Prevention Fund, set up in May to help retailers beef up their security, from $6m to $30m.   

 Likewise, self-defence as a security option was ruled out by the minister.

But the core area where the minister appeared to lean towards preserving the status quo, rather than bucking it, was on the question of accountability and consequences to young offenders.

Hipkins was sceptical of what he called the “tough-on-crime-rhetoric” that defined the response of the business owners towards young offenders.

The minister did not see an overnight fix for the problem.

But the perception that the police are soft on crime has been gaining ground following a spike in the number of ram raids, particularly in South Auckland.

On October 18, the Quick Picks convenience store in Mission Bay was broken into by three teens in the early hours. On October 6, two car-borne teenagers smashed into a petrol station on Manakau Rd in the small hours and fled the scene in a second vehicle. The same offenders then burgled a retail store on King St in Pukekohe an hour later. Their vehicle was tracked by helicopter and stopped using road spikes in the Manurewa area. The two occupants of the vehicle, aged 13 and 14, were arrested.

While this drama was unfolding, another burglary was taking place at a Takanini superette around the same time. Almost simultaneously, yet another store was broken into on Alfred St in Central Auckland.

A jewellery store in North Shore was struck three consecutive times in early October. Videos of the incident were posted on social media by members of the public.

These are some of the recent instances of smash-and-grab raids involving juvenile offenders in stolen cars operating under the radar of the law.

Small businesses are the backbone of the NZ economy and dairy owners, who form the segment bearing the brunt of this type of crime, are largely New Zealanders of Indian origin who toil day and night to ensure the uninterrupted supply of such basics as milk and eggs to the wider community.

The police are clearly swamped by the back-to-back burglaries. But heightened police presence and community patrols are proving blunt instruments in the face of loopholes in the justice system, with juvenile offenders returning to the streets before the ink has dried on the paper work after arrests are made. Unsurprisingly, prosecution rates are low.

The police are hamstrung by what are widely seen as the inadequacies of the law.

The government is approaching the problem via its socio-economic roots by introducing the “Better Pathways” package that aims to bring more young people into the ambit of education and jobs training as a means of checking youth crime.

 Hipkins has described the package as designed to prevent young offenders from reoffending. The government is counting on reform to contain youth crime on the grounds that a punitive approach would only turn youngsters into adult criminals in the long run.

As per this approach, all children aged under 14 years in Counties Manukau and West Auckland, implicated in ram raids, are referred to the cross-agency Social Well-being Board which intervenes with “wrap-around” support.

But is this laudable approach delivering?

Data indicates otherwise. In the year ending July 2022, police have recorded 436 ram raids, double over the previous year’s figure.

Significantly, the number of ram raids during the same 12 months five years ago, stood at 84.

 This means there has been a 400 per cent increase in ram raids over five years. Alarmingly[VM1] , 76 per cent of those offenders are under 18 years of age, of which 38 per cent were repeat offenders aged between 12 and 19 years.

Many of the offenders were gang members. Most were doing it for thrills, social workers in South Auckland have found.

Many of the teens caught up in the ram raid culture come from broken homes or are homeless and stuck in poverty. They lack good role models and end up as apprentices to adult criminals.

These young people appear to fit the Hobbesian description of living in a world where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”