Quite the contrary, a key elementof our plan to restore law and order in this country is the effort to ensure there are real consequences for crime. Everything we have done and have proposed has been designed to sheet home consequences and personal responsibility.
Our first move in government was to drop the previous Labour Government’s focus on reducing the prison population by 30 per cent, irrespective of the rate of offending in the community. We replaced that goal with a target to reducing the number of victims of serious violent offending.
The good news is that we as a country are making good progress on that goal. Having inherited 185,000 victims of serious violent or sexual offending in October 2023, we set a goal of reducing that number by 20,000 by 2029. The latest stats reveal the number has dropped by 29,000 already. There are still too many victims, but we are making progress. Ramraids, another symptom of disorder, have fallen by 85 per cent.
When focused on reducing the number of victims of crime, a good place to start is with that small group of New Zealanders creating multiple victims, over and over again. That’s why we brought back the tough sentencing regime of Three Strikes for most serious repeat offenders, and why we gave police more tools to deal with gangs, who have an outsized involvement in crime.
Then we toughened up sentencing rules generally. We stopped funding cultural reports, which had become a cottage industry designed to achieve discounts in sentences. And we passed legislation to cap the total discounts available to judges to 40 per cent. Offenders will no longer be able to get discounts for remorse, over and over again. All this is designed to bring home consequences for crime.
Next, we turned our attention to retail crime, which has been a scourge on our society, costing billions of dollars over time and contributing to a sense of disorder.
Earlier this year, we announced a suite of initiatives which are nearly ready to be introduced into Parliament as amendments to the Crimes Act, Tresspass Act and Summary Offences Act.
One of the proposals is to introduce an infringement regime for shoplifting. This is not replacing the criminal regime currently in place for theft, as claimed by Judge Harvey, but adding to it.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says there is no plan to decriminalise shoplifting. Photo / RNZ
As is obvious to everyone involved, police cannot prosecute every shoplifting case through the courts under the Crimes Act. They are expected to use their judgment and focus limited resources on the most serious cases.
As a result, however, a sense of impunity has developed where many shoplifters have concluded that they can get away without any consequences.
The infringement regime, where police can issue an infringement notice, as they currently do with driving offences, will provide an immediate consequence for shoplifting in certain circumstances.
For serious and repeat offenders, of course, the option of prosecution under the Crimes Act will remain.
Another proposal is to broaden the reach of citizen arrest powers. In practice, this would mean that security guards, for example, would be able to hang on to and restrain offenders until the police arrive, without fear of being themselves arrested for assault.
Why are we doing this? Because many Kiwis will have seen examples of people walking out of the supermarket, with a trolley full of food escorted by staff or security guards as they make their way to the car, but with no one being able to do anything. It is a joke.
Yes, it’s true some retailers, particularly the larger corporate ones, aren’t enthusiastic. Plenty of others are. The good news is that no retailer has to do anything if they don’t want to. The change is simply enabling retailers to do something they currently can do after 9pm at any time of the day.
Our focus is on the fair expectation of retailers, their workers and their customers to operate in a safe environment.
Retired Judge Harvey is right to point towards enforcement and deterrence as critical components of society’s fight back against retail crime and crime more generally. Police have many tools available to them now, and we are giving them some more.
But, most importantly, we are changing the message to offenders – your criminal offending is not someone else’s fault, it’s not society’s fault, it’s not something to be minimised or excused.
The offender is accountable and will be held to account. Help and rehabilitation are available to those who want it, and young people in particular are given chances to change tack. But, ultimately, we want to see fewer victims of crime.
