Ignoring causes dooms real solutions
It comes as no surprise that the Government will introduce laws to ban gang patches in public places, try to stop gangs from gathering and communicating, and give greater weight to gang membership at sentencing.
By manufacturing outrage about any news over the last three years related to gangs and ramraids, National and ACT, with the support of many in the media, created a false narrative that a crime wave was sweeping through the country.
It worked for them, becoming a defining theme of the election.
Instead of pushing back, Labour played into their hands by buying into their framing. In the end, politicians across the spectrum competed to come up with the most punitive policies to crackdown on crime.
This is just history repeating itself. The spectre of gang intimidation has been used for decades to instil fear in the population. Over the years there have been endless policies, taskforces and laws that have targeted gangs. None of them have made a tangible difference.
Statistics show that there has undeniably been an increase in gang membership in recent years.
Just looking at the forced return of 501 deportees from Australia, and the response from local gangs who have been recruiting to protect their territorial boundaries, helps explain this.
The criminal activity of many gangs is largely focused on the drug trade. If a government wanted to strike a blow at the heart of the gang economy, it could give up on prohibition and the war on drugs.
Beyond that, any effort to reduce the power and influence of gangs in Aotearoa will be doomed to fail unless it focuses on addressing the social determinants that feed gang culture. -Understanding how to do this requires looking at the historical and cultural context.
Youth and street gangs formed in the 1950s and by the 70s established gangs including Black Power, Mongrel Mob, and the Head Hunters had been formed.
It is estimated that more than threequarters of gang members are Māori.
In 1945, 26% of the Māori population lived in the towns and cities. By 1966, the urban share of the Māori population had grown to 62%. This urban migration was a rapid shift in the country’s cultural identity, depopulating rural towns and transforming the social landscape of city centres and surrounding suburbs.
Government policies such as ‘pepper potting’ - only allocating state houses for Māori scattered among Pākehā families, were a deliberate attempt to assimilate urban migrants into Pākehā society, limiting their ability to maintain collective support structures, traditional resources and whakapapa connections.
For many Māori families, the consequences were devastating.
Grinding poverty became a reality. Pernicious, daily racism was the norm.
The removal of Māori children from their families became a widespread practice. The concept of stolen generations is still perceived as something that just happened in Australia.
Targeting Māori children wasn’t explicit in legislation or policy. However, research shows that the actions that were taken were similar, and the parallel is clear.
More than 80% of children who experienced abuse while in state care were Māori.
Residential facilities were criminal training grounds, teens were recruited into gangs from care homes, and foster children forced to steal to survive. One in three children placed in residential care by the state ended up in prison later in life.
A survivor of this abuse, presenting to the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care, said he believed the explosion of gangs in Aotearoa in the 70s and 80s was a direct result of the way young Māori were treated by the Crown since the early 50s.
The Waitangi Tribunal has also acknowledged this connection, noting that an estimated 80-90% of Mongrel Mob and Black Power gang whānau had been in state care.
When looking at this history it’s impossible not to see the cyclical nature of trauma and violence. The intersection of poverty, abuse and addiction gives rise to social marginalisation, and for many, a deep sense of shame and despair. The correct policy response is to support whānau to heal, not punish them further.
There is no doubt that some people feel intimidated by people who wear patches. But we must recognise that, statistically, most of those people were themselves systemically intimidated and abused by a society actively hostile to their very existence.
There is a strong likelihood that the Government’s new policies will foster a new wave of disconnection and trauma by seeking to break up gangs through the criminalisation of their identities.
Giving the police powers to prevent gang members from associating with each other, and the courts more ability to lock them up for longer, when their communities were borne out of societal ostracisation and imprisonment will just compound the problems.
Furthermore, there is little evidence that the policies will work. The gang patch ban and dispersal proposal are modelled on controversial laws passed in Western Australia, which have done nothing to reduce gang-related crime.
No-one is denying the criminality that continues in many gang communities to this day. But ignoring the causes just demonstrates a lack of interest in finding real solutions.
If politicians genuinely want to crack down on gang culture, and not just whip up fear and hate, they need to get serious about tackling entrenched poverty, mental illness, addiction and social isolation.
Tough on crime policies have failed. It’s time we got tough on healing.