KEY POINTS:
The announcement of the general election date means the triennial bidding war by political parties to appear the toughest on law and order is about to get into full swing.
National Party leader John Key said last week that law and order would be a major focus for National during the campaign, with the party's commitment to getting tough on crime being highlighted by its latest election billboard.
Senior Labour Cabinet minister Phil Goff has floated the idea of following South Australia by outlawing gangs.
And Act has put up billboards claiming that it is the party of "Zero Tolerance for Crime".
However, after practising law in South Auckland for 11 years, I am convinced the No 1 crime-prevention policy is a job.
It is an interesting exercise to check media reports of people appearing in court charged with criminal offences. In the majority of cases, their occupation will be listed as "unemployed".
Similarly, a large proportion of the people I see each week in the cells at the Manukau District Court do not have jobs.
This means that they lack the finances to participate fully in society and have little or no self-esteem because it is people's occupations that are largely the basis of their standing in our community.
And these people I see have plenty of time on their hands to get into trouble.
A job solves all three of those problems in one hit.
If New Zealand really wants to lower its crime rates, the country - and its politicians - should focus on full employment as its top priority. People who are lucky enough to have always been employed have little understanding of the despair and misery of being without work.
A majority of the people I deal with in the cells are young men. Significant numbers of them cannot read and write.
They come from troubled family backgrounds, and their living situations are extremely unstable.
They have no fixed homes, instead moving from place to place at intervals of around six weeks.
They do not own cars, probably have no telephone landline where they live, and do not have access to the internet.
Up to 80 per cent of young offenders have drug or alcohol problems, while 70 per cent of them are not enrolled in any form of education. I regularly see young men of 17 years of age who are poised on the cusp either of becoming contributing members of society or of going down the road of a life of crime.
It is a job that is the crucial factor in determining which path will be taken. It costs about $80,000 to keep someone in prison for a year. But that money can be far more productively spent on preventing people from ending up in jail in the first place.
Put it instead into schools for teenage mothers, early-intervention programmes for high-risk families and intensive mentoring of children from preschool age onwards.
The most heartening story I have read in the Herald recently was one about Hawkins Construction and its subcontractors, who have given jobs to 12 young offenders on the North Shore.
The result: a slashing of the crime rate in Northcote.
The initiative came from two of the company's construction managers, one of whom said his parents had thought he was going down the wrong path when he was young and had got him into a trade training scheme. That set him on the path to a productive life, and the same is happening for the young offenders who have been given a chance by the company.
Three have now been offered apprenticeships with Hawkins. Nothing can explain the huge significance of what the company has done better than the words of the young men themselves.
Sam Helu, 17, said: "Most of us that used to walk around [now] have a job. I feel lucky that I was one of them. Now I'm trying to change."
Faasii Peterson, who grew up selling tinnies, said: "I thought I'd never like to work, I couldn't picture myself working. I thought the life I was living on the street was all there was. There's no way I can thank [Hawkins] enough. I've said thank you so many times."
If that scheme could be rolled out to companies all around New Zealand, it would do wonders for crime rates.
Similarly, New Zealand needs more intensive mentoring of disadvantaged young people such as that provided by the "I Have a Dream" project, which is based in Mt Roskill and aims to pick up children at a young age and get them all the way through high school and then into trade training or tertiary study.
And schools for teenage mothers can pick up young women who have dropped out of the system and get them back on track.
Political parties in the run-up to the election should remember that being tough sometimes means not taking the easy option, but instead looking at long-term solutions that would actually produce positive outcomes.
* Catriona MacLennan is a barrister working in South Auckland.
