Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, November 1st, 2007 - 49 comments
Categories: crime -
Tags: crime
John Key made a speech to the Police Association today proposing a whole raft of new police powers, ranging from banning gangs to taking DNA samples from anyone who is arrested, regardless of whether they’re found guilty or innocent.
To justify these proposed new powers he relied heavily on the subtext that crime is out of control and we have a government letting criminals get away with blue murder.
Police need new laws and powers to fight “21st Century crime”, he said. “The National Party is convinced we can do better at putting in place the laws and policies needed to front-up to criminality in our society… when our leaders give in to crime, our society pays the price.”
But is crime really out of control? As usual, John was somewhat lacking in substance:
“The size of the criminal threat is measurable not only by crime statistics, but by the widespread fears of everyday Kiwis. Kiwis fear that ours is not a safe society.
Notice he didn’t talk about what the stats actually say, but relied instead on what “Kiwis fear”.
And there’s a good reason for this. Because you see, for all their talk of law and order, the record shows the Nats just aren’t that good at cutting crime. Not only is crime going down under Labour, it’s going down at a faster rate than it ever did under National.
What today’s speech shows is that rather than basing his policies on evidence and what’s best for New Zealanders, John Key is basing them on fear. Fear he’s more than happy to stoke himself:
“They fear that their personal security is at risk: Children being beaten to death by their parents. Paroled offenders murdering innocent citizens. Gang shootings. P-induced frenzied attacks on innocent citizens. Youth gangs intimidating communities. These things strike worry into the hearts of all New Zealanders.”
Yes John, they do. Because people they should be able to trust, like you, lie to them about the threat of crime to scare them into voting for you. It’s cynical politics at its worst, and you deserve to be pilloried for it.
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Colonial Masters – still, its worth the effort to not let such rubbish go unchallenged.
Santa – ummm, you’re not clear in your post but it looks like you’ve got recorded crimes in South Auckland per New Zealander (either that or South Auckland’s crime rate is a fraction of the National average). That’s not going to give you a workable comparison over time because the South Auckland population is growing much faster than the rest of New Zealand’s – meaning the number of cirmes per NZer n South Auckland will grow even if its staying constant per South Aucklander.
You need to compare recorded crimes in South Auckland per person in South Auckland to get anything meaningful.
Sorry, you’re simply not going to be able to slip such simple tricks past me.
Sambo – Those are using Stats estimate of corresponding population in the Counties-Manakau police region. Feel free to post an email address and I’ll send you the spreadsheet.
Try to answer the substantive issue next time.
Since you will no doubt complain again here is a few more figures for you to contemplate:
Violence up 19%
Sexual up 36%
Drugs & AntiSocial up 12%
Property Damage up 17%
Administrative up a shocking 92%
To show I’m not biased, there are a couple of decreases too:
Dishonesty down 8%
Property Abuse down 26%
Since Dishonesty offences are a large proportion of the reported crimes (about 60%) the overall increase since 1999 is only 1%.
I think that most people will understand that the increases in the categories of serious crime are a concern, and that mixing low-level offences into the picture is misleading.
Anyway, its time for a glass of red wine and a break from the keyboard.
Santa – your numbers must be wrong becuase they are an order of magnitiude lower than than the rest of New Zealand and I’m rpetty sure Counties-Manukau is not a crime-free haven… now, I found the acutal recorded crime per capita figures for Counties-Manukau at the Police Sats website:
1998: 0.123
1999: 0.119
2000: 0.117
2001: 0.113
2002: 0.114
2003: 0.120
2004: 0.100
2005: 0.097
2006: 0.119
2007: 0.111
there’s a grpah already here if you like: http://www.police.govt.nz/service/statistics/2007/fiscal/stats-counties-manukau-20070630.pdf page 18
Administrative offences are only recorded if the authorities discover them and have the resources to take action – you’ll note the biggest two classes of admin offence are imgation and against justice offences – the ulk of which are failing to answer bail – that number skyrocketed when the courts were allocated the resources to follow up on people who fail to answer – you can see the number triples from 2005 to 2006..
… drug offences are much of the same class – as there is no direct victim to report the offences they only make it into the figures if the authorities discover them – that means an increase is as much lilely to be due to increased resourcing as increased elvles of actual crime.
You’ve got to be very careful when you start to breakup the crime figures beucase there’s always a level lower and there are value judgements about which crimes matter. For instance:
murders are down 8% since 1999
(but the nubmers are too small for that too be meaningful).
what is intersting though is that only 33 of 48 murders were solved that year (30 of 45 in 1998), compared to 48 of 50 last year.
And when you look into the violence numbers the biggest increase is in ‘threats and intimidation’ – not what most people associate with violent crime. The three classes of assualt have increased 10% per capita (and there is a shift towards them being classifed as more serious) but the police analysis is that is mainly due to higher reporting of domestic violence, and cellphones which mean assaults are reported immediately when once they weren’t at all.
and lets be clear. in 1998 there were 465,834 recorded offences – in 2007, 426,584. take into acocunt population change and the drop is 18%.
Violent offences Sambo, drop the spin and read my post. Thats why the number is lower than the total
Lets me clear – in 1999 there were in 5423
COUNTIES MANAKAU – surely Labour heartland.
In 2007 there where 7442
Even adjusting for population IN THAT REGION thats a 19% INCREASE
Is that simple enough for you to follow?
I know its diffucult for you to face the facts, but please try and explain how Labour policies have ‘reduced’ those figures.
Hey Sambo, I note that you haven’t replied with your excuses yet for the 19% increase in violent crime in the labour heartland of South Auckland. I really did want to see which direction of spin or statistical manipulation you are going to attempt. Maybe the ‘more reporting is better’ line or the ‘should look at convictions only approach’ would be good starting points. Normally you could have gone with ‘oppressive Nat-voting business owners raping workers’ but since Labour has done so much with minimum wage increases and lower unemployment, there can’t be much poverty in South Auckland anymore.
I guess you may be busy with damage control after the weekends addition to the violent crime stats though.
Santy – sorry, I thought you were talking all crimes, not just violent, hence the confusion.
Well, for starts remember:
The replacement of the Wanganui computer by a more accurate system produced a step-change increase in crime figures in general in 2005 – that can be seen in the CM violence figures.
the increase was 0.0047 violent crimes per person
you have to be careful about saying only violent crimes matters as a metric – other crimes matter and not all vioeltn crimes are created equal:
25% of violent crime in CM is ‘intimidation and threats’, not acutal acts of violence, and this class accounted for 39% of the increase.
Reporting is increasing, especially of domestic violence, (which makes up 49% of violent crime). Nearly all offences catagorised under serious assualt occur in homes – they make up 39% of violent crimes and they account for 35% of the increase in violent crime in CM over those 10 years… The Police attribute the increase to higher reporting of domestic violence which has historically been highly underreported.
So, the Polcie are recording crime better, reporting is up, and the biggest increases are in domestic violence and threats and intimiation both of which are highly underreported and which have growing reporting rates… the bulk of the increase in recorded violent crime is explaned without an increase in actual violent crime.
A masterpiece of sophistry Sambo. So what you are saying is that is OK to claim that a ‘reduction is crime’ is due to Labour policies, but any increase is due to other factors, and the reported increase is just statistics?
I can see how you fit in with your Labour colleagues so well.
Here’s Tane quoting Key above:
“They fear that their personal security is at risk: Children being beaten to death by their parents. Paroled offenders murdering innocent citizens. Gang shootings. P-induced frenzied attacks on innocent citizens. Youth gangs intimidating communities. These things strike worry into the hearts of all New Zealanders.”
Yes John, they do. Because people they should be able to trust, like you, lie to them about the threat of crime to scare them into voting for you. It’s cynical politics at its worst, and you deserve to be pilloried for it.
I suggest that, given the violent crime stats, it is Tane and Labour who are who are telling porkies. People don’t loose sleep at night over fraud or graffiti.
I think you, Tane, Robespierre are pretty clearly running a hollow argument here.
Here’s some more figures for you to obfuscate Sam
Homicide…
1999: 12
2006: 27
Thats a 95% increase when population adjusted.
Kidnapping and Abduction…
1999: 16
2006: 49
I suppose you 95% Homicide
166% Kidnapping And Abduction
149% Robbery
52% Grievous Assaults
8% Serious Assaults
-22% Minor Assaults
51% Intimidation And Threats
46% Group Assemblies
Lets hear you argue that Kiwi’s shouldn’t fear these crimes?
Thats a 166% increase when population adjusted.
Here’s the table of changes from 1999 to 2007:
95% Homicide
166% Kidnapping And Abduction
149% Robbery
52% Grievous Assaults
8% Serious Assaults
-22% Minor Assaults
51% Intimidation And Threats
46% Group Assemblies
Hay Santa as you don’t site your stats I can’t be sure they’re for real but – Homicide covers manslaughter (it literally means “man-killing”) “culpable homicide” is murder. I’d suggest if we saw a judiciary getting tough on crime then the number of homicides would increase as more “non-culpable” killings (such as drunk driving killers, bar brawl killers and folk who killed their kids through negligence) were held to account properly.
At a guess I’d say kidnapping and abduction increases are also a result of a heavier approach to crime as the majority of these crimes relate to domestic situations which prior to a firmer stance on crime would have been reported/charges under domestic abuse.
It’s a bit like when they expanded the definition of A-class drugs and surprise! More charge/convictions for A-class drugs.
Mmmmmm a-class drugs…
Oh yeah, and before I forget – Santa, fuck off.
Oh and I meant “cite”
God you’re a joke Santa. You should know that you can’t make meaningful statistics out of such low numbers. From 12 to 27!!! That’s like more than 100% !!!!
You’d be laughed out of Stats 101.
(Captcha: University fun)
Bend-over – go tell the families of the 27 victims that they are not meaningful. Who’s the joke?
“Children being beaten to death by their parents. Paroled offenders murdering innocent citizens. Gang shootings. P-induced frenzied attacks on innocent citizens. Youth gangs intimidating communities. These things strike worry into the hearts of all New Zealanders.”
Tell me which of these things aren’t happening more often under Labour – that was the point of Tane’s post anyway.
DPF Claws – when you use the pun “bend over” are you being homophobic? ‘Cos bro – that ain’t got no truck here. Fuck off.