Frogs in a Boiling Pot of Crime, Part V

Winning Some Battles, But Not Yet The War

The tide of crime seems to be receding in New Zealand, according to the latest statistics released by police.  The Minister of Police has claimed the following in a press release:

Police Minister Anne Tolley has praised frontline Police, with recorded offences down for the third fiscal year in a row, and a massive 17.4 per cent drop in crimes in the past three years.  There were 29,337 fewer recorded offences in the year to June 2013, a fall of 7.4 per cent, representing a 7.9 per cent drop per head of population.  In the past three years there were 76,775 fewer crimes, with a fall of 5.2 per cent last year, and 5.8 per cent the previous year.

This is good news, although it needs qualifying (see below).  There was some bad news, however, tucked away at the bottom of the release:

However, there were increases in both dwelling assaults and sexual assaults.  “Both of these areas, which we know include domestic violence incidents, are under-reported, and I would continue to encourage victims to come forward,” says Mrs Tolley.  “I am assured by Police that they are continuing to treat these issues as a high priority, as they work towards compiling definitive family violence statistics.

There is no doubt the NZ Police are much smarter in how they go about their work these days.
  One advance is an increasing interaction with other social agencies (both government and non-government).  There was a time when the NZ Police were like an adamant fortress.  Policing was their business; it was no-one else's; get out of our patch.  It operated more like a trade union than anything else.  These days that attitude is attenuating markedly; we hope it disappears in the dustbin of history for ever. 

The NZ Police operate more now with a working assumption that crime is thoroughly integrated into society: therefore, the police also need to be integrated into society in their work.  This means far more engagement with social institutions like families, businesses, communities, schools, welfare agencies, neighbourhoods.  The engagement is twofold (in a general sense).  The first is educational: explaining to the wider social network the patterns of crime in the local neighbourhood and community.  The second is developing alliances in the community by encouraging agencies, groups, and communities to work with police in opposing and reducing crime.  As community groups--and the leading individuals within them--get to know their police personally, mutual trust is likely to develop, to where the whole community works to help the police do their job. 

This represents a "back to the future" reformation. In 2008 an academic, Dr Lech Beltowski was interviewed on national radio. 

During this interview he touched upon what amounts to, not just disillusionment, but the general public's increasing sense of alienation from the police and the justice system.  He outlined how historically the role of self-protection by the citizen has always been vital in the fight against crime, as was intended by the founder of the (sic) modern policing, Sir Robert Peel.  He added that this had now been undermined by current policing methods which empower the criminals at the expense of the law abiding citizen, who are (sic) no longer free to defend themselves and their property. 

The "self-defence" element encouraged by Peel, he argued, had been turned on its head with the police all too often behaving as though it is the general public who needed to be controlled, not the criminals. [David Fraser,  Badlands. NZ: A Land Fit For Criminals (Kaukapakapa, Auckland: Howling At The Moon Publishing, Ltd, 2011), p.70f.]

Commendably, these attitudes and institutional bents seems to be changing substantially in operational policing in New Zealand. 

We believe this is a huge advance, and it is starting to bear fruit, as made evident by the latest crime statistics.  Implied within this approach is a very important principle: policing is a community responsibility before it is the NZ Police's.  If a community tolerates misbehaviour and petty crime, the criminal underworld will very quickly conclude it is "criminal friendly" and will move in by osmosis.  A more lawless cohort will drift into the area seeking rental accommodation: criminal acts will increase.  If meaningful pressure from the neighbourhood is brought to bear upon those living on the darker side, informal criminal social groups tend to move on and their jungle drums beat the warning to their fraternities.  Some communities become known as "unsafe" for those of a more criminal bent. 

A second principle is equally important:  the community needs to be engaged in punishment and the correction of younger, less serious offenders before it is too late and they become confirmed in criminal careers.  For younger offenders facing the wrath and disgust and pain of one's extended family over one's actions, coupled with an earnest desire to help the offender get straightened out, and make appropriate acts of restitution to victims are powerful tools both to punish, correct, and restore younger offenders.  Oftentimes this works alongside community groups contributing job-training, life skills, and helping to find work.  These are things the police cannot do on their own, but require lots of integration into the community and engagement from the community to help and contribute and play an appropriate role. 

We were told recently by a policeman of his experience with angry young Maori men whose modus operandi is often to taunt white police (once arrested) with their Maori heritage, along the lines of, "You don't belong here.  This land is ours.  My grandfather was in the Maori Battalion, etc. etc."  He frequently  retorts: "That's all well and good.  And what do you think your ancestors would think of you now?   They would be ashamed and disgusted at the way you have just behaved."  Community sentencing and restorative justice carries this principle back into the communities from which the criminal tyro has emerged.  

These strategies of integrating much more into the community have been systematically employed by NZ Police over the past few years.  There is no doubt they are bearing fruit.

“Our Police have been working hard to focus on crime prevention, and these excellent results show that their efforts are paying huge dividends,” says Mrs Tolley.  “Our frontline officers are better-resourced than ever, and are increasing their presence on the streets to prevent and tackle crime.  Foot patrols were up 70 per cent last year, and new technology such as smartphones and tablets are allowing officers to input and access important, up to the minute information, as well as delivering over half a million additional crime prevention hours every year.”

Domestic violence will prove a much harder nut to crack.  Most are fuelled by alcohol.  But the zero tolerance and "It's not OK" approach will likely have some effect over time.

One very important caveat is the quality and incompleteness of data. This is not to gainsay advances made, but to keep them grounded in reality.  Crime victim surveys reveal that the general population suffers far more from crime than the police statistics would suggest (since the latter are drawn from police involvement, which is but a subset of crime.)

In our next post on the "Boiling Pot of Crime" we will review the results of crime victim surveys undertaken in New Zealand.  Whilst these do not negate the recent real advances the NZ Police are making they do provide a very sharp reminder that crime is a far, far bigger problem than what is recorded in the official NZ crime statistics.  We continue to live in a boiling pot of crime.  There is much, much more work to be done.  We have "miles to go" before we sleep.

It is thus apt that we conclude this piece quoting from Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening--remembering that every citizen has a lifelong responsibility to resist and combat crime and criminal behaviour whenever it is seen:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.