Jarrod Gilbert: It’s election year - expect politicians to crack down on gangs

OPINION

When it comes to crime, I’m backing our police over our politicians.

The gang tangi in Ōpōtiki recently certainly created real problems; but these were only heightened by politicians looking to make the most of it. All the while, the police took the action that was necessary and desirable.

Calls for the police to somehow break up the tangi and take back control of the town missed a couple of key points. Firstly, the town was never out of control by any reasonable measure. Indeed, without the political commentary and the ubiquitous reporting of media, the whole event would have gone largely unnoticed outside of the town itself. That’s not to diminish the disruptions that a large gang-attended event brings to a small town, or any place for that matter. But these things could be handled by the police.

How do I know? Because they demonstrably were. There were more column inches written about the threats that might occur than any of the threats coming to fruition.

Secondly, breaking up the tangi would have been enormously self-defeating. The police led with a questing principle that we should all live by: are the consequences of my actions in tackling an issue going to create more problems than the issue itself? In this instance, breaking up the tangi would have created more mayhem for Ōpōtiki. Imagine what that would take and what it would look like. Think about breaking up the anti-vax protests in Wellington and triple the trouble. And for what gain? Yip, there was some illegal behaviour by gang members, but among it all there was a grieving whānau, too.

Furthermore, the problematic behaviour was not ignored by the police. Apart from direct action taken over the period of the tangi, police have been following up since. A dozen people have been arrested, a number of vehicles impounded and numerous traffic infringements issued. This doesn’t get the same publicity, but it’s the police making the right decisions in going about their job.

Politicians, too, were doing their job chasing votes by talking tough and promising legislative changes.

Last year I made a prediction we would see gang laws proposed before the next election, and this has come to pass. I am, however, no sociological Nostradamus. Any mug could have seen them coming given the circumstances.

I made my prediction based on an analysis of gang laws that were devised in the 1990s. This wasn’t the only time politicians have attempted to tackle the gangs, of course. There are plenty of examples, but this was the biggest effort in our history: so I ran a ruler over them.

The laws were hopeless. Zero impact. Two of them have never been used. But more interesting than that - the similarity between then and now is stark. Growth and movements within the gang scene were causing violence between the groups; as it is now.

But the key to the issue, then and now, is a looming election.

Crime is a hot issue before elections for one simple reason. It works to gain votes. In other words, the public encourages big statements and grandstanding around crime, because we reward it.

I know that I will get a flurry of correspondence saying that I’m defending gangs – even though not a sentence in this piece suggests such. All I’m doing, at least attempting to do, is highlight that the gang situation is highly complex and yet politicians invariably reach for simple solutions. But complex phenomena will not be solved simply. This is why past attempts have failed. Yet somehow, we’re convinced that this time will be different.

Unlike the police, who largely go about their business without fuss and actually get results, politicians make a huge amount of noise and invariably come up empty-handed. But coming up empty-handed may be a victory. The gang laws of the 1990s were hopeless, but they did no harm. I rather fear that in politicians’ enthusiasm to be seen to be doing something, new legislative measures will create more problems than they solve.

But that is neither here nor there to politicians acutely focused on an election. The only outcomes they are looking for are votes. And in this regard, all of the tough-talking will, in all likelihood, work.

Dr Jarrod Gilbert is the director of Independent Research Solutions and a sociologist at the University of Canterbury.