Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Bounties for burglars?
OPINION: Auckland’s a wild west of crime, so it is time to put bounties on the heads of burglars and ram-raiders, and our insurance companies should stump up the money.
This is the suggestion of one of Auckland’s mayoral candidates, who says if he is elected he would work with insurance companies to offer rewards to catch criminals.
Sick of a graffiti and crimeblighted city, John Lehmann came up with the scheme, and I really do sympathise.
The businesses in my suburb of Epsom are suffering.
In the last two weeks I have chatted to the woman in charge of my local Freshchoice supermarket about the plague of theft and criminal damage the store has suffered.
I spoke with the owner of my local bottle shop, who has started keeping his door locked after dark, and only lets people in when he judges they are not a threat.
He has had too many scary moments. He has lost too much stock.
There is an antique store owner having to repaint her sign after she fell victim to a daredevil tagger who climbed up to daub their name across it.
The dairy nearest my house has new doors after being ram raided.
It is depressing. It is alienating.
But would putting up rewards be a good use of my insurer’s money?
I pay my insurer for catastrophe cover. A broken window and a ding don’t bother me. It is fire, earthquake and rear-ending an expensive car that worry me.
Those are the things I insure my house, contents and car against.
Lehman says there is no honour among thieves, and he would expect to see people inform on the bad guys for money. It is definitely worth a try, he feels.
One teething problem with his plan is that insurance companies are not on board.
Neither Tower, nor IAG (which owns the State, AMI and NZI brands) were keen on the idea when I asked them.
And there are other issues. Haydn Smith, the chief executive of Crimestoppers, a charity which makes it easy for people to phone in tips to be passed to police, says rewards are offered in New Zealand only in the most serious of cases that have gone unsolved for many years.
It is not in our culture to put bounties on heads, and there is reticence about rewards since the debacle in which a criminal claimed a reward for returning priceless military service medals he had had a hand in stealing from the Waiouru National Army Museum in December 2007.
Community good, not money, is the reward for passing information to police.
Rewards can be of use. When a reward is offered for information on a violent crime overseas, it increases media coverage, encouraging people to come forward with information.
But most rewards offered go unclaimed.
The British charity Crimestoppers often offers rewards for information on serious crimes.
Its 2020 ‘‘impact report’’ says it offers rewards of up to £10,000 (NZ$19,000) on serious cases, often when investigators are struggling because they face a wall of silence, or a crucial piece of evidence is missing.
‘‘Over the past year we have offered nearly 50 enhanced rewards which have generated vital leads for senior investigating officers,’’ the report said, but did not reveal how many were paid out.
Its financial statements show it paid out £10,450 that year, and £1000 the following year.
Tempting as Lehman’s plan appears, I’m not convinced it would be a good use of my insurance premiums.
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