New arrest laws: Negligent & dangerous! / A.J. Hendry

The Government is abandoning the poor and the desperate to fight it out in the streets!

The Government has announced that they are moving ahead with a recommendation from the Crime Prevention Advisory Group to allow businesses to defend their property and conduct citizen arrests.

This is foolish and dangerous.

And if it goes ahead there is little doubt that people will get hurt and the risk of someone being killed in an altercation will clearly increase.

The reality is that a lot of the crime the Government is talking about are crimes of poverty. They are people stealing to - quite literally survive. Inequality is increasing in Aotearoa, and there is a community of people in our country who our society has quite frankly abandoned to suffer the indignity of extreme poverty, and as a result, are feeling more and more desperate.

I spoke to a child just the other day who shared that, they "don't steal, they just try to get their basic needs met, like food or clothes". She shared this with sincerity, and absolutely no duplicity. In her mind, and her young experience, stealing was the only way she knew to get her most basic human needs met. She was experiencing homelessness, as were her whānau, and she just didn't feel she had any other options available to her.

Another rangatahi told me just this week, "no one wants to be in a gang, or do crime, we just don't have any other options".

We have a community of people in this country, whānau, rangatahi, tamariki, who feel hopeless and desperate. People who have been let down, failed by our Government, and see no other way to survive than to take what they can get.

If the Government goes ahead with this, they will be abandoning desperate and poor people to fight it out in the streets, while at the same time, cutting resources off from the community which are desperately needed to support people and prevent the harm we are seeing.

If the Government is serious about caring for small businesses, they would be looking at the evidence behind why a lot of the crime they are concerned about occurs, and responding appropriately.

Instead, the Government is ignoring the evidence, and is abandoning whānau who own small businesses to fight and defend themselves. People will get hurt, people will die.

No items on a shelf are worth more than a person's life. We can replace things, we can't replace people.

This is foolish and negligent law making.

I am also equally concerned about young workers, and the risks this exposes them to.

We already hear storys of young people getting pay docked because gas, or items, are stolen while they are on shift. Can you imagine the pressure young workers will be under if their boss makes defense of property company policy?

If the Government moves ahead with this they will be increasing the risk for young workers who will undoubtedly feel pressure to put their own lives at risk, in order to keep their jobs, and protect their bosses property!

This is another example of policy which prioritizes political expediency, over evidence and expertise. The consequences of this policy will land heaviest on our communities, while failing to respond to the real concerns we all have!