Venu Menon
Wellington, August 13,2023
Ram raids are apt to pass off as commercial burglaries in police data entries.
Ram raids are burglaries in which the means of entry is a vehicle.
But a ram raid does not have its own offence code, so the automated data entry does not specify a ram raid or the method of entry or attempted entry, which makes the data inaccurate.
“This makes collation of data problematic,” a recent police statement on retail crime and ram raids says.
The data is also drawn from a “live data set” that can change as investigations progress and, hence, “the data, even for a similar period, can differ if analysed on two different days.”
Though this is not an issue at the local and District level “from an operational perspective,” there is a question mark around accuracy in collating data on ram raids at a national scale, with officers at the scene or during the subsequent investigation entering details that are subjective.
Those entries can be “inconsistent from one incident to the next and from one officer to the next.”
This leaves room for the possibility that “ram raid style burglaries were missed due to the key words not being included in the free text.”
Conversely, the figures may also include incidents that were related “but not actually ram raid style burglaries in and of themselves (e.g., receiving stolen property, or a person acting suspiciously prior to a ram raid style burglary).”
The upshot is that the accuracy of the data collated by police on ram raids “cannot be guaranteed.”
This revelation comes on the back of a spike in ram raids this year, affecting small local retailers and larger chains.
Police estimate retail crime costs New Zealand retailers $1 billion each year, and has “a significant personal impact on those working in the industry.”
Bollards and other security equipment have been installed for small retailers from a $6 million allocation under a crime prevention programme managed by police.
Data released under the Official Information Act show that last year police recorded 516 ram raids and identified 708 offenders. Of these, 495 were aged under 17 years, 70 under 13 years, and 88 were adults.
Police say there were 388 ram raid style incidents resulting in 218 prosecutions in the six months ended May this year, as per local media.
Cash, tobacco products, cigarettes and alcohol are targeted in ram raids.
But the killing of a worker in the course of a burglary at a convenience store in Auckland late last year has left the government scrambling to put together a coherent crime prevention policy.
With the general election looming, retail crime is a snowballing issue that is forcing Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and his party to get their optics right.
But angry business owners are clamouring for harsher penalties for retail crime, which neither Labour’s crime prevention fund nor National’s proposed boot camp for youth offenders answers.
The government is prioritising rehabilitation over punishment, and is committed to providing wraparound support for youth offenders aimed at steering them away from a life of crime.
But victims of retail crime see harsh punishment as the deterrent to youth crime. That will require a law change that New Zealand lawmakers have little appetite for.
With no let-up in retail crime, the Labour government appears to be speaking in two voices. While Hipkins has ruled out legislative change and is relying on fog cannons to control crime, Police Minister Ginny Andersen is leaving the option of tweaking the law on the table.
For now, the government seems set on the two programmes targeting young offenders. Kotahi te Whakaaro is a joint effort by the police, Oranga Tamariki, the health and education sectors, Kainga Ora, the Ministry of Social Development, local non-government agencies and iwi, which targets offenders aged between 14 to 17 years.
The second is an early intervention programme called the “circuit- breaker,” targeting children aged 10 to 13 years and covering Auckland City, Hamilton and Christchurch.
Clearly, the government is torn between directing its resources to the generational goal of weaning young offenders away from crime as against addressing the pain of the victims of retail crime, here and now.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
