What’s driving the crime rate up? Poverty and an election

12
0

1632717_f260

Crime rates are jumping…

Burglaries, robbery, assaults drive up crime rate

A surge in people falling victim to burglaries, robbery and assaults are behind an increase in reported crime in New Zealand over the past year.

The official crime statistics for the year ending August were released today, and showed 12,529 more victims than the year before.

The increase equates to a 4.8 per cent rise in crime.

It’s more bad news for Police Minister Judith Collins after last month’s crime statistics showed a 2.3 per cent increase in crime in the year to July.

…Kiwi’s love punishing criminals more than they hate crime, so in a culture as tiny minded as ours, we refuse to see connections between culture and personal choice. It’s part of our 30 year neoliberal mythology, I succeed because I’m great and hard working, you fail because you are a loser.

The two reasons burglaries, robbery and assaults are jumping are because of social policy and the Police wanting more resources from the 2017 election.

Cops fiddle with the crime stats all the time to minimise crime during the term of a Government and then allow them to rise just before an election so that they gain leverage over the public that ‘something must be done’.

The other reason our crime stats are jumping is counter productive draconian welfare reforms. National have been proudly throwing tens of thousands of beneficiaries off welfare for almost 9 years now, at some point that has to have an impact in the lives of desperate people who have little to lose.

Watch how the solution will now be harder tougher sentences rather than better social services.

 

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

12 COMMENTS

  1. PinoKeyo-Key says, “its much easier to make NZ Predator Free by 2050 than it is to solve Child Poverty, its too complicated so its not a priority!”… RNZ

  2. judith collins is the best thing to happen to the banking and insurance ‘ industry’.
    She, it, and them interlock like a gruesome board game.

    • Maybe its a kill two birds with one stone scenario? CYF’s, Prison Combo will save a homeless problem & justify building more prisons because Child Poverty is not a Priority as PinoKeyo-Key says: …”it’s easier to count rodents than kids in poverty.”
      Who cares if there’s 80,000, 100,000, 200,000 kids in poverty. Just get off your effing backsides and do something about it! A quick fix. Feed the kids 1080 with their weetbix! What a Wanka!
      http://www.radionz.co.nz/news

  3. This is to some degree also my assessment.

    New Zealanders are so depoliticised, the vast majority is too busy chasing consumerist lifestyles and products that come in from overseas, no matter whether made by decently paid labour or slave labour. They have been brainwashed thoroughly.

    The poor and disadvantaged have been denied a say in many things, the dis-empowerment starts at the early childhood and primary school, where collective norms are drummed into them, where submissive thinking and behaviour are encouraged, so nobody dares question or challenge things.

    I see it all around me, many adults even, have faces that remember one of infant faces, they have never learned to think and act for themselves, and to question the status quo brought upon us by the neoliberal revolution kicked off here by the likes of Roger (Traitor) Douglas, Prebble and others.

    Ruth RICH(arse one), excuse the rude pun, continued with ruthless drumming down on any dissent, and recreated a class of new poverty, that has lasted for the affected to this day.

    Any person falling behind, lacking the educational skills, the opportunities, the social network support and so, they see NO other way to live a life that others their age consider normal in the age of consumerism.

    So while they never learned to express their anger and dissent politically, while they have been taught that every one must fight and fend for themselves on their own, and that anything the state may do is BAD, and that work, business and opportunity is all there is for getting “ahead”, they set out to take what they think they need and deserve, by breaking the law.

    If confronted, they lash out, they have nothing much to lose. Why also have respect for those better off than oneself, when at the school grounds they were taunted for not having the label clothes and newest gadgets others had.

    Why have respect for the oppressor, those that deny you a fair go, which is a hollow phrase in today’s New Zealand, a “fair go” no longer exists for many.

    And some also escape into alcohol and other drugs, to get a break, a boost of joy or self empowerment (a feeling of it at least), and while doing so, they may get into some conflicts at time, which again are “resolved” by following the law of the jungle, the only law they have learned in the neoliberal, ruthless society, where you only get some help once you are at the bottom of the cliff.

    It is the same as in the US, where people have been treated similarly, where politics is discouraged, where political solutions are only presented by elites from two parties, who have the same “solutions” most the time, and who ring hollow in the ears of voters.

    So is anyone surprised? I am not at all surprised.

    The white and new migrant middle class though is outraged, calls for “harsher laws”, for a “crack down”, which the crime loving media nurtures (the anger). So the vicious cycle will continue, we will get more get angry, divisions get greater, we will again have more and new hard laws, we will have more punishment, to protect the vested interests of those that fear “threatened” as their properties in the suburbs, their nice apartments in the better parts of the city, are no longer “safe”.

    More gated communities, more security, more surveillance, more singling out, more stigmatisation, more suspicion, more division, and the journey just goes on and on.

    Crime is the result of a broken, dysfunctional, undemocratic society, I think, and hence we have this dilemma. The stubbornness of those voting Nats, ACT and United Future every three years, that is what keeps us from changing the narrative and perhaps bring some constructive change.

    • I think most of us get the problem, Mike.
      What is needed in solutions.
      And there are solutions we can all contribute to.
      The last election was knife-edge close despite Labour having their worst outing in decades.
      If we all try to combine our efforts rather than turning on each other, we will be able to begin to address the problems you discuss.
      If not not.

  4. The way I see it is Nationals budget brand state assistance, police and justice system is a failure, in complete contrast to their crime reduction targets and get tough on crime bullshit.

    I expect more stat rigging for the dumb masses.

  5. This is what makes me laugh, albeit in a sick, sad way, about National’s welfare reforms. Do they simply believe that the people they chuck off welfare suddenly cease to exist? I mean, they sort of do, statistically, which is the only sort of existence National concerns itself with, but they’re still out there, desperate, hopeless, ground down and probably more than a little frustrated and angry. You don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to conclude that some of those people are going to do whatever they feel is necessary in order to survive. And if that means they carjack a Parnell housewife for the groceries in the backseat of the Audi, then should we all pretend to be shocked and appalled?

    Probably not. But it’s so much easier to write them off as “feral scum doing what feral scum do”. It’s a vote winner. It doesn’t require any depth of thought or painful confrontation of pressing social issues. They’re mongrels who should go to prison. Out of sight, out of mind. And the suburbs look so much nicer when they’re not clogged by destitute vagrants and begging junkies who drag down our property values and discourage foreign investment.

    Hooray for the “Brighter Future!”

    • Starting with bigoted fascists like you, Andrew.

      Just think:: no more self-righteous Tories with an inflated sense of entitlement!

      • The ‘safe and secure’ NZ Keys hypnotised his followers/fans with will be paid for by the state to get rid of the down and out and crims for sure now ah? Sick – billions will be spent on lawyers, judges, police, and jails, and stuff all for the lower classes suffering on in crappy houses, with cheap food, etc.
        No capital gains tax, no means testing of superannuants, no hassling the big corps for taxes due, oh no the Nats wont touch those revenue raisers! Solutions are not something this govt interested in, they can make money out of privatisation of misery, just like they do with retirement homes and childcare – $$$ in the sharemarket to invest in bombs and more misery elsewhere. When and how can we get this insanity to stop??

  6. Crime is up this year, but has been declining steadily for decades, the very decades during which you claim neo-liberalism has been in play.

Comments are closed.