Three months out from the election Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ tone on youth crime is quickly changing from the one he used as police minister
Analysis: Snappy soundbites echoed across news media last night, with the Prime Minister telling New Zealand he’d had a “gutsful” of youth crime and gangs.
“Kiwis have had a gutsful of people acting as if the rules don’t apply to them and I have had a gutsful of that as well. The system needs a shake-up.”
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It’s a perfect soundbite – but one Hipkins as police minister vowed he’d never touch when it came to talking about youth crime.
“Evidence-based policy doesn't make good short-term politics, but it makes good politics in the longer term. If you look at the nine years that National was in government, they were very good at the short-term soundbite politics," he told Newsroom in September.
“But all of the fundamental problems continued to grow during that time... we're trying to get underneath these problems and try and fix them, rather than just try and win the spin war about them."
His cool, calm and collected vision of 10 months ago is a far cry from the position he’s now had to take.
“I’ve been fed up the whole way through," Hipkins said in a post-Cabinet announcement on Monday afternoon.
"It’s been unacceptable all the way through but I’ve absolutely been hearing from New Zealanders the level of concern they have about that.”
The Government yesterday announced legislative change that would “tackle youth and gang crime”, seemingly connecting the two – something it has steered away from up until now.
It will now be an aggravating factor in sentencing if adults use young people to commit a crime or if details or video of the crime is posted online.
The courts will be required to make youth offenders attend education programmes or partake in community service, and victims could attend family group conferences as a way for offenders to confront who they had hurt.
Police will also receive funding to hire 78 more prosecutors.
As much as Labour doesn’t want to peddle a tough-on-crime approach, it’s been forced to. But with just seven weeks of Parliament left, it no longer has the runway to actually implement any of the changes it's announced.
The centerpiece of National’s policy from its annual conference was a package of changes to sentencing and victim support.
Act has also been busy, recently announcing a proposal to treat 17 year olds as adults in the justice system as well as comprehensive reforms of Oranga Tamariki.
Reports of retail robberies specifically involving young people have been relentless.
Meanwhile Labour’s approach, which has been to deal only with prevention and the underlying causes of crime, is no longer holding up, and Hipkins has been forced to show some tougher love.
“When I became minister for police around this time last year, we launched a programme then that was about preventing young people from falling into a pattern of repeat offending, around things like ram raids, that’s had good outcomes but clearly ram raids are still happening.
“So this builds on the work we put in place last year. I’m not going to rest until we actually see this problem tackled, we’ve been working on it and haven’t fully tackled it yet so we’re going to. Hipkins was careful not to completely walk back Labour’s commitment to wraparound support, adamant the new measures would be in addition to that ongoing work," he said.
Labour now dipping its toes in the tough-on-crime corner has opened itself up to swift ridicule.
Act leader David Seymour has accused the Government of only upping the ante because it’s three months out from an election.
“After more than five years of cuddling criminals and ignoring victims, Labour’s sudden pre-election change of heart on crime is hardly believable.”
While National’s justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith described the announcement as “window dressing”.
“For years Labour have told us youth crime is not really a problem and National was scaremongering. Now Kiwis are expected to believe tackling crime is a priority for Labour yet they will not even enact their announced changes until after the election because they have not done the background work.”
The Government is expected to announce more in the law and order realm this week – an acceptance it needs to step up in this space if it's got any shot of budging the polls.
