Editorial: It's a crime wave. Stop it.

While those at the response end of the Kiwi crime scene may be starting to detect some subtle shifts for the better there must be absolute bewilderment over the frequency of aggravated robbery.

Jail near certain for the convicted, maximum possible 14 years, and usually targets of a mere pittance considering the risk.

Given general likelihood of detection, eventually, thanks to poor planning, the simple question is: "Why would you?"

We made the point a week before Christmas, pointing out that after more than 20 well-profiled dairy, service station and bar robberies a few had started to complete their paths through the courts, in some cases with a disaster of a family message: "Daddy won't be coming home."

Approaching 18 months afterwards the same could be said again, with headlines this morning of the latest raid, mid-morning and targeting staff at a Hastings CBD bar, strikingly similar to a raid on the same premises almost two years ago.

One man jailed for over six years for his roles in more than one of the robberies explained he had been unable to support the children, the consequences being an irony of some degree.

Thus, given that the propensity for such robberies continues, questions need to be asked about how some people are driven to such "desperation", the only explanation that makes any sense, itself a bit of an oxymoron in that desperation doesn't usually involve great degrees of lateral thinking.

Nevertheless, it is desperate people that society has, with clear indication that the combined forces of the law are not changing things much at all. Witness, more than 30 aggravated robberies in Hawke's Bay in the last year.

As we said 18 months ago, it's time to think, guys, but it's also time for society to think about what it can do to limit the numbers of people prepared to risk so much, for so little.

These are themselves consequences of a society failure, for essentially such robberies are not committed by the bone idle and lazy, and there's a balance between those who've come from a life of crime, and those who have not.