Does New Zealand have a crime problem or a reporting one?

One of several dairies and stores targeted in ram raids in Christchurch. Photo: NZ Herald/George Heard.

With 2023 being an election year, many issues of interest to the public are being discussed, one of which is crime.

This year has seen a perceived rise in youth crime and in particular ram raiding, with both Labour and National proposing their own solutions to tackle this nationwide issue to voters.

It seems every day throughout major media outlets there is at least one article about ram raiding and on evening news shows politicians talk about their plans to end youth crime and stop the ram raids.

But how prevalent is ram raiding? Is New Zealand experiencing a crime wave? And what role does the media and its coverage of crime have on how it is perceived by the public?

New Zealand Police data shows that there have been 360 reported ram raids between January and June 2023. Compared with the same period in 2022 where it was higher at 392.

August 2022 was the worst month for reported ram raids, with 116 occurring.

When accounting for retail crime, ram raiding makes up one percent of all retail theft, according to police briefing papers obtained by the New Zealand Herald in late 2022.

Every day there are articles in the media about various crimes, be it assault or theft, but is crime actually increasing?

Using the Crime Snapshot tool on the Police website, trends can be observed. There are six crimes that can be tracked using this tool, they are Assault, Sexual Assault, Abduction, Robbery, Burglary and Theft. Between June 2022 and June 2023, occurrences of five of the listed crimes remained more or less the same with only slight fluctuations, the only crime that saw large an increase was theft.

In 2022 there were 172,000 reports of theft. In 2023, the number had rose to 226,000.

Minister of Police, Stewart Nash when asked in parliament by an opposition MP responded by pointing out that there have been increases in retail chains reporting theft using Auror and that many of these crimes were not reported to Police previously.

In 2017, 17% of retail crime was reported to the Police via Auror, in 2022 that was up to 65%. This increase in reporting has led to in an increase in the retail crime statistics.

Director of New Zealand Police, Superintendent Philip Taikato echoed Nash’s comments in an interview to the AM Show on Three. When asked about the rise in crimes between 2022 and 2023 that, "what that tells us is there has been an increase in reporting and we want to encourage more and more from the public."

When talking about media and it’s how it shapes the public’s perception of crime, University of Canterbury Professor, Donald Matheson, notes that “I don’t like most crime news”, he continues on to say how crime reporting has always been popular, ‘’especially when you tell a simple story of bad people hurting good.”

“That it’s easy journalism. It can easily be bad journalism, when it doesn’t go deeper.”

There is a lot of research that shows a lot of individual stories about crime told though police reports feed stranger danger in a way that is out of proportion when compared to the risk of most people actually becoming a victim of a crime themselves.

Other issues Matheson brings up when discussing modern media reporting on crime is the lack of discussion on why crime is being committed in the first place which are partly about the individuals being locked away in the first place.

“The growing gap between rich and poor, the colonialism that’s shared wealth and opportunity unequally and the failures of education and housing and the mental health system.”

When asked about how the industry can improve its coverage of crime, Matheson notes that reporting needs to be about people. An example that Matheson notes is Radio New Zealand’s crime and social issues reporter Kristy Johnson.

“She listens, especially to people who are young, poor or vulnerable. They’re the ones who experience most crime, often from people close to them” he said.

Matheson notes the importance of this kind of reporting by saying that, “understanding their stories tells us about crime in a way that brings us all closer together rather than leaving people afraid and locking their doors.”

Matheson himself wants to see a story about the ram raiders themselves and “why things like ramraids have suddenly become popular among teenage boys. I can’t think of a single story that's talked to them.”

Talking to more victims such as vape and liquor store owners, “just tells us about anger and fear and nothing much about where this kind of crime came from.”