Could an uncool name halt a criminal trend?
Social media fads can be utterly baffling for anyone over the age of 25 – but occasionally, they’re a force for good rather than just a chance for some silly antics.
Remember the ice bucket challenge of 2014? Described as the most popular social media trend of the decade, it originated as a stunt to raise awareness of ALS, the neurogenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In less than 60 days, $US115 million had been raised for ALS research after more than 17 million bucketers uploaded their videos to Facebook. Ten billion people watched those videos. The ice bucket challenge is now an annual fundraiser and has been described as ‘‘the ultimate case of a technological triumph in not-for-profit fundraising’’.
The current ‘‘fad’’ being driven by social media here in New Zealand has no such lofty ideals. Ramraids – where (mostly) stolen cars are driven through shop doors and high-value goods taken quickly – are now an almost-daily occurrence, and this week police revealed 88% of the culprits are under the age of 20.
After two more raids overnight on Thursday, there’s building moral panic in the community – with a large dash of cognitive dissonance involved. How can we see the now-daily headlines and not conclude there’s a youth crime epidemic under way?
A look at the statistics reveals that’s not the case – youth crime has been trending downwards for the past decade, with offending rates for children (those 13 and under) and young people (14 to 17 years) falling by 65% and 63% respectively, between 2011 and 2021.
The information we don’t yet have, is what exactly is driving (no pun intended) the surge in this particular crime. A souppot of factors are evident: some raids show the marks of organised crime (fast, well-planned swoops on high-value goods may be filling steal-to-order lists), and some have been attributed to gang initiations.
Poverty, inadequate parenting, and the youth justice system have also been blamed.
Ram-raids are not a new phenomenon – the ‘‘new’’ bit is the uploading of video evidence to social media platforms like Snapchat and Tik-Tok, apparently for bragging rights. Police have accepted the trend is driving copycat behaviour and say they’re working with social media platforms to tackle it. What solutions might come from those talks is still a mystery, and given we know those platforms tend to drag their feet, we perhaps shouldn’t get our hopes up.
One thing is certain – eventually, someone, presumably a child – will get hurt or killed if the carnage is not stopped; a fact police also admitted this week. The issue has us all scratching our heads – and looking for creative solutions.
In an interview with Counties Manukau Detective Inspector Karen Bright earlier this week, RNZ’s Kim Hill had a bright idea. Could a name-change, from the outlaw-glam of ‘‘ram-raid’’, to something more uncool, be the key, Hill asked.
It may have been a tongue-in-cheek comment – and it certainly baffled Bright into complete silence. Could it hold a nub of truth?
We’ve seen this before. In 2014, the New South Wales government backed calls for ‘‘king-hits’’ (one-punch assaults that often leave their victims badly injured or dead) to be renamed ‘‘coward punches’’. The public call was made by the family of teenager Daniel Christie, who died in January that year after being assaulted during a night out in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
The terminology took off in mainstream media and is still widely used, even after a British tourist sued a television news outfit for defamation in 2019. The tourist won his case, which rested on whether Channel Nine was right to use the term ‘‘coward punch’’ to describe his actions after he was acquitted of grievous bodily harm.
What could we call this latest spate of car-related robberies, if not ram-raids, then? Gutless grabs? Looting losers? Goon raids? The really difficult bit might be settling on a phrase that does the job and that we can all get behind – and that’s not an easy task.
The root of the ram-raid issue won’t be changed by a terminology-swap, especially in those cases where the crime is driven by need, or by gangs. But it just might slow the copycat element; after all, a fad only lasts as long as it’s cool.
Just ask John and Max Key, who apparently killed another social media fad – planking – stone-dead a few years back.
Ram-raids are not a new phenomenon – the ‘‘new’’ bit is the uploading of video evidence to social media platforms like Snapchat and Tik-Tok, apparently for bragging rights.