- By Simeon Brown, Member of Parliament for Pakuranga
The Government’s been busy rolling out its plan to crack down on gang crime and reform our sentencing system to ensure our communities are kept safe and perpetrators of crime are held accountable.
With gang membership increasing by 51 percent over the last five years, and violent crime increasing by 33 percent, this Government is committed to restoring law and order.
Gang members make up less than one quarter of one percent of the New Zealand adult population yet are linked to 18 per cent of all serious violent crime, 19 per cent of all homicides, 23 per cent of all firearms offences, 25 per cent of all kidnapping and abductions, and 25 per cent of all the crime harm caused by illicit drug offences.
From November 21, gang insignia will be banned in all public places, courts will be able to issue non-consorting orders, and police will be able to stop criminal gangs from associating and communicating.
Greater weight will also be given to gang membership at sentencing, enabling courts to impose more severe punishments.
Repeat offenders continually convicted of displaying their patches in public will be subject to a new court order, prohibiting them from possessing any gang insignia for five years.
Police will be better equipped to target disruptive gang events, with the power to issue dispersal notices to break up public gang gatherings and place a non-association order on those involved following the event.
We’re also progressing with sentencing reforms to ensure criminals face real consequences for crime and victims are prioritised.
In recent years, there’s been a concerning trend where the courts have imposed fewer and shorter prison sentences despite a 33 per cent increase in violent crime.
These reforms will strengthen the criminal justice system by capping the sentence discounts that judges can apply at 40 per cent, preventing repeat discounts for youth and remorse, and implementing a sliding scale for early guilty pleas with a maximum sentence discount of 25 per cent, reducing to a maximum of 5 per cent for a guilty plea entered during the trial, among other measures.
We’ll also include additional aggravating factors into sentencing to respond to adults who exploit children and young people by aiding or abetting them to offend, and offenders who glorify their criminal activities by livestreaming or posting online.
