The Front Page: Will National’s gang policies actually work?

There’s no silver bullet to New Zealand’s gang problem, but something needs to be done to address this growing problem.

This is according to Jared Savage, the author of two books on organised crime and a senior investigations writer at the Herald, who tells the Front Page podcast that the major parties in New Zealand acknowledged the need to get tougher on gangs.

“Labour, National, Act and others campaigned for stronger anti-gang laws,” says Savage.

“What’s happened over the last five years – and this does tend to be overstated at times – has been a growth in gang activity, which has spilled out into the public, making people feel unsafe.

“Under Labour, I think things carried on a little bit too long before they realised there was a problem but they reacted last year by bringing in some tougher laws of their own.”

Savage said the public had grown tired of feeling intimidated by the gangs and that there needed to be a reaction from politicians.

National has announced a four-pronged plan to address gangs. This includes a ban on gang patches and insignia in public places, the introduction of dispersal notices, the release of consorting prohibition notices and finally a strengthening of firearms prohibition orders.

A prominent member of the Mongrel Mob this week told the Herald that these laws would be tantamount to “psychological war” on the gangs, while other critics have warned that it won’t be easy to enforce all these proposed orders.

Savage said the challenge with tools such as dispersal notices was that they could be difficult for police to enforce.

“If you’ve got a gathering of 100 gang members, you’re actually going to need possibly 200 or 300 police officers to enforce the law. That’s where this becomes difficult. And that’s why other solutions are sometimes necessary to de-escalate things or getting leaders in place to have conversations prior to big riots happening.”

The point Savage makes here is that law enforcement will still have to rely on other strategies above these strict new laws to ensure peace is maintained in communities.

“There’s no silver bullet … But what this does give police are the tools to make life difficult for gang members if they’re making trouble.”

The other challenge is that gangs are often woven into communities through family ties, making it difficult to distinguish a gang member from someone who just happens to be related to someone in a gang.

“Gangs like the Mongrel Mob and Black Power are widely ingrained in the community. They’re part of the social fabric in many ways. However, there are other gangs which are not part of the community. They just come in from Australia and they are true outsiders.”

For those gangs that are more integrated into society, Savage says there could be human rights challenges in enforcing some of the rules that have been suggested by National.

“It’s going to be a very tricky path for the incoming Government to tread. The wider public doesn’t really care. They’re kind of sick of some of the behaviour that’s going on, and they probably won’t mind that different gang groups or advocates are kicking off about it.”

Savage says he wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of these policies ended up in court further down the line.

“The Bill of Rights underpins everything in New Zealand, so I think some of these proposed laws could fall foul of that. If it’s tested to the highest level before the judiciary, I do wonder whether some of these proposals will get watered down a little bit.”

So will these policies help to ease community concerns? Does it help to jail gang members? And why do politicians regularly campaign so hard on taking action against gang members?