Posted on 04/23/2006 3:59:00 PM PDT by DieHard the Hunter
Several titillating newspaper columns have recently been devoted to bail rules, rising prisoner numbers, jails, and the lack of criminal rehabilitation.
The killer of Hinewaoriki "Lillybing" Karaitiana-Matiaha boasts she is not reformed. Special pleaders push pet theories. However, no journalist seems game to tackle the cause of the growing problems faced by the police, the justice system, and the wider community that relies on their protection.
Why do gangs fight openly in suburban streets and small towns? Why do the police fail to follow up on most burglaries or smash-and-grab raids?
Why do calls by gas stations with the registration numbers of cars stealing expensive petrol get no police response? Why do many ordinary people feel they have no option but to take the law into their own hands?
The answer to these questions is that there is no political, journalistic or police willpower to explore such uncomfortable issues. Journalists these days are captives of the fatal fallacy that societies, not individuals, cause crime. They think it politically incorrect to question minority cultural practices that produce young offenders.
Politicians are scared of offending the police who, when stirred, can become a potent force during elections.
Neither National nor Labour seems ready to tackle the huge crime subculture that is chewing away at core social and community values in this country like a tumour within.
I hasten to say that New Zealand is not alone in this regard. I read recently of a constable in Bournemouth, England, writing to shop keepers telling them not to report shoplifting crimes involving goods valued at less than 75 ($200). Turn a blind eye and invariably the crime sub-culture expands.
It is odd that many folk seem so little concerned at this erosion of the values that hold communities together, especially since the cause of so much antisocial behaviour stares them in the face. Take gangs, for example. They had their origin in the early 1970s and resulted mostly from excessive numbers of Maori and Pacific Island children suddenly finding themselves in a confined urban environment.
Household over-crowding and schools unable to cope with the rapid influx created street kids. But it took inadequate parental care to turn this into crime. They fecklessly failed to deal with truancy. Burglaries provided street kids with money and excitement.
The mushrooming beneficiary culture of the 1970s boosted their numbers. Gangs matured and were soon involved in organised crime. Drugs followed.
The problem tracks back to surplus children and irresponsible parents. Britain and France are also experiencing minority cultures overbreeding while refusing to acculturate into societies that have given them a second chance. All governments seem too scared to face up to basic problems.
Rapid social changes over 30 years caught the police flatfooted. In most countries they have been under- resourced, and priorities inadequately directed. Burglaries, shoplifting and graffiti flourish because they aren't prosecuted. The old nostrum that we need more community constables is no longer enough. Meanwhile, the police concentrate on catching speedsters, often for trivial infringements.
Police Minister Annette King has announced a review of the Police Act. Good. And there will soon be a new police commissioner, too. A wonderful opportunity for top-to-toe reviews of police priorities and effectiveness.
Let's investigate what was called the "broken windows" policy in New York, where police resources were directed towards catching first offenders and nipping careers of crime in the bud. The greatest deterrent has always been the likelihood of getting caught.
Some commentators question the effectiveness of zero tolerance, preferring alternative schemes. All need examination. However, it is not clear from King's announcement whether radical police reprioritisation is a possibility. Sadly, National has had little to say.
Let's be clear. Coming to grips with crime is a worldwide challenge. First, it involves holding individuals accountable for their actions. Reminding parents about how many offspring they can care for is fundamental. Parents must answer for the antisocial activities of unsupervised children.
Providing options for young offenders is central to crime busting, too. It could well be that schemes such as the Civilian Conservation Corps introduced by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, where the army helped to train young men, could inculcate the life skills and discipline that so many parents (and social workers) have failed to do.
Labour's Norman Kirk talked about this, and it was discussed again in the 1980s. Some Maori have advocated similar strategies. Let's put everything up for discussion, then do something, before we are overwhelmed.
www. michaelbassett.co.nz
http://www.michaelbassett.co.nz/biography.htm
This editorial should be given a fair bit of credibility on the strength of Dr Bassett's qualifications.
It is truly amazing how many times New York's "no broken windows" social experiment gets cited here in NZ: a remarkably successful program. It's almost a fetish, a mantra DownUnder. Yet nothing gets done to replicate it!
Go figure!
(Hinewaoriki "Lillybing" Karaitiana-Matiaha was a wee Maori toddler. She was brutally murdered by her mother's stepsister in a horrific act of child abuse.)
So has Helen Clark weighed in on this yet?
> So has Helen Clark weighed in on this yet?
I think she's unlikely to. Crime and penal reform do not seem high on her agenda: I can't remember the last time she ever spoke about it.
It's a lose-lose issue for her: if she comes out in favor of "no broken windows" it is a frank admission that the measures taken to date have failed. It's also a tacit tip-of-the-hat to America, and *everybody knows* that Americans can't do anything right. /sarc
If, on the other hand, she rubbishes the issue and says there's no problem, she risks being made to look like a fool because the problem of Crime in New Zealand is so obvious it sticks out like Dog's Bollix.
Nope, her best move is to remain silent on the issue -- which is what I believe she is doing.
Crime is good. It provides an excuse to crack down on the law abiding...
Has NZ throttled free enterprise? Perhaps part of the problem lies there.
> Has NZ throttled free enterprise? Perhaps part of the problem lies there.
I believe the crims are exercizing "Free Enterprise" in its most literal form. With the tacit complicity of our government.
When the crime rate gets as bad as it once was in the US, the politics will follow.
Having lived here for more than half of my life so far, I would say it will be fat chance New Zealand will really put policies to respond to crimes that are modelled after the "broken-window" mentality.
For one thing, as tamu said, New Zealand believes in a very soft approaches to crime fighting. It is deep in our national psyche to "rehabiliate" criminals, and "confrontional" approaches like what Giuliani supported in New York is just "too hardcore and too rough", "too American" that will "cause social uphevals". Note that for most cases of life sentences for serious crimes, the offenders are out on parole after only serving 10 years at maximum even when under the 1990s National Party government.
They might have paid praises to the zero tolerance approach, and even sent teams of consultants, police commissioners, and even mayors themselves to New York to observe the NYPD's ways of fighting crimes (as Chris Fletcher did during her time as Auckland's mayor - she paid a visit to Giuiliani's New York City to study zero tolerance approach), but at the end of the day the do-good mentality will always prevail. The reports about zero tolerance will always be dismissed as "unsuitable to New Zealand's circumstances."
Rather, how Nottingham in the United Kingdom "fought" gun crimes is something I expect that will happen here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1617119/posts
"...In the wake of Danielle Beccan's killing, a multi-agency campaign - Nottingham Stands Together - was launched with a three-year strategy to deal with gang violence and stamp out gun crime.
Danielle's death also inspired a high-profile poster campaign, called Not In My City, featuring images of well-known and ordinary people from Nottingham united in their resolve to reject gun crime. "
Bassett is a good man, but some of his points are still a bit off. I would consider him a neoconservative by US definition or at least a Miller or Joe Liberman Democrat.
> Bassett is a good man, but some of his points are still a bit off. I would consider him a neoconservative by US definition or at least a Miller or Joe Liberman Democrat.
I had the privilege of meeting him once. I'd have put him squarely in the Conservative bracket.
Well of course as the Auckland University student magazine put it just before the 2000 US presidential election, the more conservative half of the US Democratic Party would belong to our own National Party!
> the more conservative half of the US Democratic Party would belong to our own National Party!
Ours is a wierd political landscape, ay mate! Matters have come to a pretty pass when Conservatives like myself do not know whom I can vote for, with a clean conscience.
MMP will be the ruination of our Country.
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