New Zealand’s Coalition Government Gang Policy and the Death of Evidence

Abstract

A particular focus of the NZ government in relation to crime control is its stated aim to ‘smash the gangs’, signalled through a range of policies, including banning gang patches and providing police with enhanced dispersal powers. So far, one significant feature of the government's platform is its inability to provide evidence that demonstrates the efficacy of the criminal justice policies and interventions it plans to implement, such as boot camps and banning patches. Government members have also shown themselves immune to evidence of the efficacy of existing policies and interventions it has sought to remove, or that problematises their claims about the likely success of those they want to introduce. It is argued that the government is employing an ideology-based policy process that is driven by political expediency (winning votes) rather than employing an evidence-based approach, which would demonstrate a genuine concern for reducing crime and ‘making us safer’.