New crime stats showed that last year burglaries jumped 16 per cent to 74,182 – that’s a burglary happening every 7 seconds.
That is a total failure of politics and policy.
Let’s be clear, there is no easy solution to crime. Anyone telling you that more cops and locking people up for longer is the solution is lying to you. Crime is made far worse by failed politics and stupidly thought out policy so if we want to be serious about reducing our crime rate we need to look far closer at what is driving that crime. Burglaries are one of the consequences of this mess, sadly the thieves can see opportunities but I believe there are some key drivers to the upsurge in burglaries and crime.
They are:
Jobs – The appallingly high level of youth unemployment, especially for our Maori and Pasifika teenagers, obviously contributes to the problems we are seeing with crime. A Government that isn’t prepared to invest in job creation will just end up building more prisons.
Truancy – There is a clear correlation between truancy and youth offending. If we can keep kids in school, then we lower crime rates and build better citizens at the same time.
Meth – Experts are saying that the jump in burglaries is connected to the explosion of meth use, users will steal anything to feed their addictions. We need far more meth treatment programs and the same kind of anti-P public advertising campaigns we have for traffic safety.
Poverty – I’m not saying poverty causes crime, but it sure doesn’t help. When people feel trapped, they look for desperate ways to survive. People trapped in poverty need to see better opportunities or else crime looks preferable.
Tobacco black market – Consistently raising the price on tobacco is creating a black market and our community dairies are bearing the brunt. Now although politicians have probably done the right thing by making tobacco inaccessible particularly to the working class, Maori and Pacific Islanders, they have created a problem at the other end with some of these people turning to crime to placate their fix.
Now those 5 drivers of crime are things politicians need to show leadership on and if addressed will surely help in our efforts to reduce crime and burglaries.
In terms of protecting ourselves from burglaries and crime day-to-day there are simple things we can do. The first one is get to know your neighbourhood. Too often we don’t know who our neighbours are and too often this lack of community can be exploited by thieves. If you don’t have a community neighbourhood watch group, organise one now. Neighbour watch groups have every tip that we should know in making ourselves and family safe, so make it a priority to join one.
We can never ever be crime free as a country, but cracking down on the drivers of crime and more education of how to keep ourselves safe can minimise it.
First published in the Manukau Courier
Yes Willie,
So has our railways now been reduced to a lame duck for the Chinese to scoop up for a song as regional rail gets pulled up for a cycleway that will cause more devistastion as our roads are crammed for trucks and people will die under them as they now seem to control the roads.
What a horrible mess we have inherited with this scavenger Government that doesn’t care for us kiwis.
We hope Labour pushes to save our Gisborne rail and pickup that National held seat winning it too, before the railway gets lifted for a cycleway leaving Gisborne as the most isolated city in the whole country.
Talk to your Napier MP Stuart Nash on this please.
To late Willie,
As today the dumb bastard at Kiwirail gave our rail to an Auckland business guy to run bikes up and down !!!!!!!
We will get it back or bust.
Get into them Willie for our whanau sake..
“Wrong way Kiwirail.” 30th March 2017.
Comment to Gisborne Herald.
Kiwi rail’s sudden announcement that it has made a decision to give access to a rail bike venture today 30/317 shutting out Gisborne from any freight and passenger/tourism access requires scrutiny firstly, since it appears rushed without notifying other interest bids.
Kiwirail makes a blunder by refusing to engage with all Maori, and the community groups ahead of the decision to decide to give our rail access to a “rail bike venture”.
On reflection Kiwirail in 2013/14 treated the HBRC very badly when it refused to offer that large powerful Council more than three months over that Xmas to provide a solid business plan.
HBRC has never recovered from that crushing treatment as they had an airtight backing for a complete rail services and funds to maintain the line also and their was an interest from HBRC to work with other parties to allow other uses as a bike trails and other ventures to enhance the whole region, without sacrificing anyone’s interest here.
This seemed the best decision Kiwirail could have made then and made money for the taxpayer to..
Now we find that after three years later Kiwirail held every other interested party in the compete dark, and refused any consultation with any of these parties except the Rail bike interested party any consideration we can draw a reasonable conclusion that this was kiwi rail’s plan all the time to not even consider any rail services at all and we need to have this lack of consideration for the community affected by their callous decision to ignore repeated requests from community groups and Maori for proper consultation given ahead of any decision.
Kiwirail have breached their own State Owned Enterprise Act obligations to engage with the community in which they operate and consider what is in their best interest here, never mind not even considering consulting with the land owners who allowed the rail line access across their tribal land years ago!
I am not a lawyer but Kiwirail have in my mind have blundered and made the wrong move right here.
Much dissention will be generated by ignoring the will of the people over what appears an easier way out for Kiwirail to remove itself from being responsible for providing a urgently needed rail freight and passenger/tourism service to the most isolated regional city/community in the country when we just witnessed Kiwirail restore two south Island rail routs in a heartbeat.
As the article in the Gisborne herald August 23, 2016 entitled “Labour-Greens united on rail” said ‘Wrong government in place’ to make rail a reality” we now see clear evidence of this so election time we need to rid the rail hating politics for our own good.
In the coming weeks we will see a backlash to this blunder by Kiwirail under the direction of a rail hating government.
It should be clear that none of the other bidders for the rail at this time were even given any discussion or consultation ahead of today’s decision, a bad act of good faith from Kiwirail to our community. Dark forces are emerging here.
I never had a call or any communication at all from Kiwirail though my Company CER Ltd had offered to assist Kiwirail in Environmental monitoring issues for free.?
Thing is with truancy in Auckland is National restructured it a few years ago and most of the provision of truancy enforcement is now run by some crowd in West Auckland.
Problem is, and I know this for a fact, the service is so bad schools have given up with trying to deal with truancy through truancy officers like they used to before the restructure. I’m sure the stats look better but are truant kids a good thing?
A new government needs to look at this straight off and how truancy funding and enforcement provisions can be addressed. Because it is more than simply taking kids off the street and back to school.
Interesting suggestions. One small question: shouldn’t the statistic be one burglary every 7 *minutes*, rather than every 7 seconds?
I calculate 74,182 burglaries over a year is around one over every 7 minutes, rather than every second.
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