Crime in New Zealand - Addressing The Drivers of Crime

Addressing The Drivers of Crime

In 2009, following the Drivers of Crime forum, the National led Government established four priority areas to reduce crime in New Zealand. This included improving support for maternity services and early parenting, addressing conduct and behavioural problems in childhood, reducing the social destruction caused by alcohol (and increasing treatment options for problem drinkers), and improving the management of low-level repeat offenders.

Improving support for maternity services and early parenting is considered important because conduct and behavioural problems in childhood are an important predictor of later chronic antisocial behaviour, including crime. Interventions the National led Government has adopted in this area include increasing the number of intensive case workers to support vulnerable teenage parents and attempts to improve participation in early childhood education. However nothing has been done to reduce the level of teenage pregnancy in New Zealand which is one of the highest in the developed world and five times that of other western countries like Holland, Sweden, Switzerland. Developmental disabilities and behavioural issues are increased in children born to teen mothers and such children are usually plagued by intellectual, language, and socio-emotional delays. Teenage pregnancy is also a key driver of crime as male children born to young mothers are nearly three times more likely to commit crime and serve a prison sentence as children of more mature mothers.

Addressing conduct and behavioural problems in young children is also important. The Justice Department says if early intervention with the five to ten per cent of children with the most severe conduct and behavioural problems is effective, this has the potential to reduce subsequent adult criminal activity by 50 to 70 per cent. A key government proposal in this area is the establishment of programmes to strengthen positive behaviour and reduce bullying at school. So far this has proved entirely ineffective. In 2008 three-quarters of primary school children reported being bullied, ranking New Zealand second worst out of 35 countries in a major international study. In 2012, youth helplines in New Zealand were still being inundated with soaring numbers of bullying-related calls; Youthline reported bullying-related calls jumped from 848 in 2010 to 3272 in 2012. The youth services say schools are failing to protect students.

To address the harm caused by alcohol, the Government asked the Law Commission to conduct a comprehensive investigation into New Zealand's liquor legislation. The Commission received thousands of submissions and their investigation took over two years leading to the release of a 500 page in-depth report: Alcohol in Our Lives: Curbing the Harm. The Government incorporated many of the less important recommendations made by the Commission into the Alcohol Reform Bill. However, the Bill was widely criticised by health professionals for failing to address six key evidenced-based recommendations put forward by the Commission. The six included raising the price, making the extra revenue available for the treatment of problem drinkers, banning television and radio advertising of alcohol, reducing trading hours of bars and clubs, reducing the number of outlets allowed to sell alcohol and raising the purchase age back to 20 years. A NZ Herald on-line survey showed 80% of respondents thought the Government's reforms were a 'token gesture' or 'could be stricter'.

When the issue of the purchase age finally reached the floor of parliament in August 2012, MPs voted to keep the purchase age at 18. All parties allowed their members a conscience vote - going against another Law Commission recommendation. Around the same time, Justice Minister Judith Collins also revealed she had dumped a plan to ban the sale of RTDs (ready-to-drink) with more than 6 per cent alcohol content. After meeting with liquor industry representatives, Collins agreed to allow the liquor industry to make its own regulations on RTD's instead. Documents released under the Official Information Act reveal the Government gave in to threats of legal action.