Graham Bell: Crime in our society - are things really as bad as they seem?

Retired Detective Inspector Graham Bell. Photo / NZME

OPINION

These days our news seems to be full of stories about crime and violence.

Tiny, defenceless children being killed or maimed in their homes.

Gang members attacking motorists and murdering one another over drug dealing and so-called turf wars, other murders arising from domestic or relationship issues, burglaries and thefts occurring with monotonous regularity, white-collar criminals fleecing mum-and-dad investors, and regular reports of unruly behaviour by gang members.

On top of this the outrageous behaviour of boy-racer groups thumbing their noses at police and society.

When I became a police officer in 1968, anyone caught doing burglaries could expect to be sent to prison.

Burglary is one of those crimes that has a devastating effect on the victims.

It has happened to me three times.

Our house in Ngongotahā was broken into and trashed with household items of value and my wife's jewellery, some of which had been handed down to her by her grandmother stolen.

Most of the drawers in the house were opened and tipped out onto the floor or furniture. The invasion of privacy we felt was acute and intense.

It lasted for months. The offenders were never caught.

I had always felt an empathy for burglary victims in my job, but these experiences sharpened it considerably.

Sadly, burglars these days are seldom sent to prison and need to rack up plenty of convictions before even being considered for it. I often joke that prison is a hard place to get into.

I have also been a victim of violence several times.

I do realise that being a police officer carries risks, but that never makes it any easier to take.

Once, in Taihape in the late 70s, a man tried to pull my eye out with his finger as I was trying to arrest him.

He earned himself a spell in prison for it.

Despite the crime happening around us, we live in a safe country, writes Graham Bell. Photo / Getty Images

But recent times have seen a dramatic increase in the level of violence being displayed by criminals in our society.

Many people my age and older will readily tell you that back in the 60s and 70s it was rare and unacceptable for people to be kicked on the ground.

The phrase "kicking someone when they're down" was well known. It was totally out of order.

But late in the 70s and since, it has become very common and this is a terrifying thing for anyone to endure; especially when many of those kicks are now aimed at the victim's head. "I gave him a good kicking" has become part of the criminal vernacular.

What is even more worrying is that this, too, even when resulting in serious and debilitating injury, seldom results in people going to jail.

People are now more willing and likely to use weapons when attacking others. Knives, machetes, lumps of wood, softball bats (usually wrongly called baseball bats because it sounds better) and anything else that might be lying about when it happens.

On top of all this is the criminal desire to possess and use firearms that shows no signs of abating, despite all sorts of measures by various governments here over the past 50 years or so.

The decision to scrap the individual firearm registration scheme many years ago was a disastrous one.

Not many people in this country would have been involved in investigating or running more homicides than I have.

It is a nasty business and each one takes a heavy personal toll on investigators. But, paradoxically, detectives love working on them.

They provide a real challenge and seeing the carnage creates a real sense of purpose and determination in the investigation team.

Murder scenes, postmortems and dealing with grief-stricken people are the most demanding aspects of such investigations, which sometimes can go on for months.

Then navigating and managing the cases through the courts is equally testing.

The whole topic of courts, processes, lawyers, witnesses, rules, juries and all that go with that whole arena could make another column altogether.

But, surprisingly, given the rather depressing outlook of this column so far, the homicide statistics are not as bad as we might have thought.

In the 10 years from 2007 to 2017, culpable homicides in New Zealand averaged out about 70-odd a year.

Despite all the doom and gloom about violence, things seem to be ticking along these days at much the same rate.

These figures had a major upheaval with the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch where 51 people were murdered.

There were also other historical events where multiple murders, such as Aramoana in 1990 and the Schlaepfer murders in 1992, skewed the figures.

But generally speaking, things are not as bad as they might seem.

Having said that, I still have real concerns about the general crime rate and where our society is heading in that regard. What are the factors that conspire to create the modern readiness to steal, burgle, assault or defraud our neighbours? I believe there are several.

Firstly, it is the widespread tolerance of wrongdoing and poor behaviour. Youngsters are rarely made to feel any consequences for wrongdoing. There is an increased tendency for parents in every stratum of society to leap to the defence of their children instead of helping to discipline them.

Many go as far as helping them avoid blame. Parents and people in authority are scared to get involved in disciplining children and youths. The anti-smacking laws have had the wrong effect.

Introduced to try to stop parents and other adults from seriously assaulting children, they have created a climate of fear for good parents and done nothing to prevent the awful attacks that continue unabated on some infants.

Very poor or non-existent parenting in some families where children grow up watching drunken and irresponsible adults in a criminal environment; and then going on to repeat those behaviours while adding even more such as drug abuse and infant assaults.

I believe the lack of real consequences now extends into our justice system and this will have a long-lasting negative impact.

Social reformers and libertarians constantly carping about the need to reform or rehabilitate criminals rather than locking them up is also a factor. This ignores the need to punish. It also ignores the need to keep them off the streets to prevent further offending.

Despite all of this, I still believe that New Zealand is a very safe country. We can rest in our beds at night confident of our safety.

Crime in this country is very low by international standards and serious crime still features in our news. In places like Los Angeles, New York, London and almost every other major city in the world, crime is so prevalent it barely gets a mention in the day-to-day press.

We have an honest, reliable and hard-working police department working through all the frustrations listed above that I am very grateful for.

• Graham Bell is a retired police detective inspector in charge of criminal investigations in the Bay of Plenty, and former host of TVNZ's crime show Police Ten 7.