A criminologist says the government is following the polls, not the evidence, in its new hard-line strategy for young ram raiders.
Smash and grabs are set to become a new criminal offence as the government moves to crack down on the rise in retail offending.
Which will include a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment: the same as burglary.
[…] Auckland University criminologist Dr Ronald Kramar said the policy might be tough on crime but it did not make sense.
“It’s the same story over and over again. Does anybody seriously think that these proposals are going to crack these tough nuts?
Kramar put the Government’s policy down to a “knee-jerk reaction” to look tough on crime in an election year.
Which is 100 per cent correct.
Police Association president Chris Cahill was bemused to the point of creating an entirely new offence for ram raids.
“It helps with the recording of the number of those offences but the reality is, it’s a burglary.”
Exactly.
[…] On the frontline, a vocal spokesman for small retailers, Sunny Kaushal, said he had been left wondering why it had taken the Government so long to introduce the policy.
Because before we weren’t so close to the election.
“It’s disappointing the changes were not introduced when Chris Hipkins was the police minister and it was obvious to all New Zealanders that kids were committing crime with impunity.”
My question is why aren’t these thugs being charged with burglary; and not just burglary, but aggravated burglary, which has a maximum sentence of 14 years?
Section 231 of the Crimes Act defines burglary as entering “without authority and with intent to commit an imprisonable offence”. That, at least to me, clearly includes ram raids.
Next, section 233: aggravated burglary is when someone while “committing burglary, has a weapon with him or her or uses any thing as a weapon”. Again, this is ram raids; you can define a car as weapon when used in such a way.
Unfortunately the Crimes Act doesnt define what a weapon is, but Merriam-Webster defines a weapon as “something (such as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat, or destroy”. Thus, with regard to ram raids, a car is a weapon.
So again, why aren’t these young thugs being charged with aggravated burglary, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years and is more than the proposed new crime?
Not only that, but in cases where these thugs are acting under orders of older gang members, why aren’t those gang members being charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary?
Let’s also not forget the elephant in the room – Jacinda and her stupid lockdowns. Now, I know that proximity doesn’t prove causation, but like the massive increase in gun violence and the gun buy-back scheme, it just seems to me too much of a coincidence.
The ram-raid legislation will be introduced in the next few weeks but will not be passed before the election.
Naturally. Expect the proposed changes to be dead in the water once the election is over.
