I don’t care how many times the upstart Police Minister from Hutt South tells me I should feel safer: the fact is I don’t and very likely the majority of the country doesn’t either. The little woman can bleat on all she likes about her extra 1800 police, but from the daily level of violent crime reported, it appears some of her comments are nothing more than misinformation. This government can protest all it likes but the ‘soft on crime’ tag is very apt.
Having a policy of reducing the prison population will do nothing to make anyone feel safer. When you hand out home detention punishments for people who should be locked up you are inviting a problem. When you then give them an exemption to go out to work then the risk of the problem you have created has heightened. We are well past the point where a slap on the hand with a wet bus ticket is an acceptable punishment.
If people do not receive appropriate punishment for their behaviour they will carry on doing it. Under this Labour Government, the gangs have pretty much had free rein, even had taxpayers’ money thrown at them. On top of that, I don’t recall the so-called gun amnesty having had much effect on them. The people who conformed to the introduced regulations were the law-abiding registered gun owners. There seem to be, if recent events in the Auckland CBD are any indicator, unregistered gun owners wandering around waving their weapons around.
Law and Order have reached crisis levels, particularly for violent crime and youth offending. The Police, along with the public, have had enough. It must be very disheartening for Police to spend time apprehending school-age criminals only to see them back on the streets in near record time. Where are the efforts being made to get them back in the classroom? Eighty-odd so-called truant officers each spread around a number of schools won’t cut it. Each school needs at least one, some more than one.
Children who come from homes where the environment is not conducive to a normal upbringing need to be removed and cared for by the state. Call them boot camps if you like, but there needs to be a place where they get an education, and are taught self-esteem and discipline. They need to get an appreciation that there is another world; one that has more to offer than the one they have come from.
In relation to more serious and violent crimes, the number one question is why aren’t these criminals locked up instead of at home with an ankle bracelet? Where are the stiffer sentences from the judiciary? The government policy is to cut prison numbers so one can only presume the Judges are taking this into account when sentencing. Mitigating factors appear to have risen in prominence.
The judiciary is supposed to work independently of the government but knowing what the government wants to achieve must have an effect on their thinking. I feel for the Judges. I think they are the ‘meat in the sandwich’ between what the public wants and what the government wants. If adequate sentences aren’t handed down, obviously crime will be on the increase. This is why the government is accused, quite rightly, of being soft on crime.
Thanks to this Labour Government, law and order is now, not surprisingly, high on the public’s list of priorities. A change in policy will only come with a change of government. Judges will then be able to pass appropriate sentences that fit the crime. Then the appropriate people will be in their appropriate places. Criminals locked up and the current government on the Opposition benches.
