Is New Zealand now a dystopia?
Hah get pranked. It’s not. Just wanted to hook you in. But it is a big issue and if something isn’t done soon we may turn into some Orwellian Novel with weird accents. How did we get there? Let’s look at crime. It’s fueled by emotion and driven by the media. Thankfully, the elections are coming up so it’ll all be solved soon, right? Well, after watching Chris Luxon, who is being heralded by the blue team as a messiah, got ripped to shreds by Jack Tame and Chris Hipkins get ripped to shreds by current statistics, it makes me wonder, are we totally screwed?
Everyone seems to have gotten it wrong. Currently, it feels like the Government has let us slip into some dystopian novel while National sees real solutions to crime as difficult to understand as a dystopian no. What’s got our crime rates to where they are is partially by thinking the solution to our problems is simply locking people away. But it’s more than that. A rehabilitative system should rehabilitate, it’s in the name. Putting kids in jail and ankle bracelets comforts our emotions of fear but doesn’t actually make sense when you look at the bigger picture.
The number of victims of crime under Labour has increased by 11.9 percent. That’s not a number that seems correct, is it? I mean, it seems there are stories everyday about a horrific ram-raid, assault, or some other brutal crime. A lot of people are scared, so much so that crime is a talking point of this election, but is this emotion being accentuated by the media’s approach? Yes and no. You see, the main issue about crime is that violent crime is on the rise. From when Labour took up a single party Government, the number of serious assaults have increased by 121%, while reports of acts intended to cause injury went up by almost 30%. There was also a ram raid, a now ‘trendy crime’, every 10 hours in 2022. These are big numbers that are showing a bad rise. Any rise in crime is bad, sure, but violent crime leads to this intensified emotion. Unfortunately, intensified emotion also leads to less rationality in policy. The reality is, if our approach doesn’t stop seeing these figures as numbers and more as people, in regards to both victim and offender, then this will be a reoccurring issue in elections to come.
So I’ve talked about the bigger picture but what do I mean? Colonisation is a pretty big one that does make one or two roll their eyes when brought up in this discussion. I’ve heard it before, people make their own choices and cannot blame history for it. But, Colonisation wasn’t some isolated event with James Cook and his fellow colonial figures. If you strip a people of their culture, take up wars against them, take their land for which they rely on for economic prosperity, and teach them in a system and language they are unfamiliar with, how surprised can we really be when their mokopuna are negatively represented in many statistics. Including crime. Māori make up 52% of people in prison despite being only approximately 15% of the nation’s population. This is why I want to look at colonisation.
Former National MP Chester Borrows, is a big reason I see it this way. He had a close connection with Pātea (Poi E was made here!), a predominantly Māori area when he was there as a cop. Tikanga, he said, spread through this town. He said it was no coincidence that as their communities were forced to dwell in a Pākeha system, hanging on to any culture they were left with, that eighty percent of that town was on government support. After World War Two, when Māori moved from the ‘country’ areas to urban dwellings to pursue work, this led to, as Borrows says, higher incarceration rates. This was because many moved away from the last roots of their culture; their whānau support system. Now urban, Māori children, who were being kept in their whānau, being educated in their culture, were placed in state housing at significantly higher rates than Pākeha children. This was happening more than 100 years after the treaty. Colonisation is certainly a cause for crime and not a one off event.
I hope after this you can understand why this can lead to a higher crime rate for Māori. They were robbed of an identity, their way of doing things, and were forced to adapt, fast, with little support. This narrative that they now have no excuses but to learn to live in this system is irritating for all these reasons. God forbid that other ethnicities and cultures have a different way of doing things, let alone what was assured to them by our nation’s foundational document.
So, what makes the most sense is not simply locking people away but better targeted support for issues such as this. As a pākehā, it isn’t my place to play white saviour and suggest Māori solutions to these issues. But, Te Whānau Awhina and Rangatahi Courts seem like they’re on the right track. That’s all from me on this.
This (kind of) case study on colonisation and crime shows real justice is looking at the root of the problem, not simply at what is sprouting. This way we can have long term solutions. If we go against the law, we have to face the consequences, that’s life. But how do we make sure that people feel the need to obey the law? When you’re looking at respective political parties’ approach to justice, don’t just go on the emotive throw away statements. Look at how they treat the people and the real issues involved in the crimes.
