Unlike other countries, our street gangs adopted the back patch, which were devised by outlaw motorcycle clubs. This gives our gangs a visibility not evident overseas.
In the early days of the patched gangs, patches worked as advertisements, drawing rebellious youth towards a brand. These unique symbols also created insider/outsider distinctions, which caused clashes between the groups.
Without these insignia we will therefore reduce incidental and often incredibly violent interactions that can happen when opposing gangs come across one another.
More than that, by taking such a high-profile approach and targeting the one physical thing that the gangs value the most, the Government is exhibiting a collective public response that hits the gangs hard. This draws the broader community together in collective condemnation.
Thumbing their nose at the law, the gang wars, the organised crime, the public has had a guts full. All good stuff.
Of course, I grant you, there are potential pitfalls. The visibility argument is tricky because gangs already use tattoos to identify, and we are likely to see substitutions for insignia that skirt the law.
The Killer Beez, simply wearing plain white vests might be the first hint of this. But substitution is not as concerning as making gangs less visible. Insignia is a massive boon for police officers, who can easily identify gang members.
In a world without insignia, identifying new members will be a tricky task. The gang list, an important tool for law enforcement, will become degraded. Gang members involved in drug dealing are going to have an easier time.
If terrorists self-identified, for example, we wouldn’t need so much security at airports. More than that, the gang list will be used to identify gang members as an aggravating factor in sentencing.
That’s going to get far more complicated and costly in instances when we’re not sure who they are. In preparing for the patch ban, let alone enforcing the new law, the police have dedicated significant resources. These resources are finite.
Are we ready to accept that enforcing clothing restrictions is the best use of police time and money? Shouldn’t they focus be on the gang meth trade? Or the epidemic of family violence that is both acute and chronic, meaning it is a long-term driver of the next generation of offenders? Or the burgeoning problem of online fraud? Or turning up to a house that’s been burgled?
In countries where gangs don’t have insignia, they suffer the same gang problems that occur here.
Can we, then, expect to see any consequential movement in crime rates because of this law? No. There is also the matter that the new law – as the Government has acknowledged – is in breach of the Bill of Rights Act.
Unlike many countries, New Zealand’s Bill of Rights has no supremacy, so the Government can ignore it. Making universal rights arbitrary is dangerous and oughtn’t be something we do lightly, but we should at least have a significant rationale or payoff. Are we getting it?
I predicted we’d get new laws a couple of years back, in fact I think I bet listeners of RNZ they would occur (I’d really like to collect on that, by the way). I reached that conclusion when I studied a a bunch of gang laws that came about in the mid-1990s.
I can save you reading the report by saying they failed miserably because they were politically driven and poorly conceived. In that report I recommended what we should see from credible political efforts.
Those recommendations were: an acknowledgment that legislative approaches may be necessary but they must acknowledge the social and economic drivers of gang membership; the goals of the legislation should be clearly defined and measurable; and any laws ought to balance other interests such as fundamental rights and social considerations including impacts on Māori.
The patch ban gave us exactly zero of these, so can we achieve better outcomes? Maybe, let’s hope so. But it’s likely, perhaps more than likely, we will get significant unintended consequences – some of which we are yet to imagine. Time will tell.
But for now, though, I have kept in my pocket the strongest argument for the patch ban. While Steven Joyce has argued the Government should be focusing on the economy and not on gang patches, I nevertheless believe the law is incredibly popular and therefore politically wise.
My former colleague and mentor, Professor Greg Newbold said long ago about a previous suite of gang laws, ‘I think it’s a political device to make people feel that something is being done’.
Even though he is long retired, I can still say to my old mate: well said.
