Crime

Last year there were 11,708 attacks by dogs on people.

Nearly 12,000 people suffered dog bite injuries last year, including more than 1700 children aged under 10 – many of whom will be left with scars.

The number of attacks requiring medical attention has increased since 2003 when 8677 people were attacked, including 7-year-old Carolina Anderson who has needed years of surgery after being mauled in an Auckland park.

Her case was so bad it resulted in tougher dog control measures being passed, including the compulsory microchipping of all dogs, but they appear to have done little to prevent thousands of other children from being bitten.

ACC claim statistics released to the Herald revealed 11,708 claims were made by dog-attack victims in 2011 – at a cost of $2.4 million.

A good proportion of those will be dangerous dogs like Pit Bulls and the like, an if the attacks were severe then it is likely that they were put down.

Then there are attacks on people by mongrels:

Police statistics for the year ending June 2011 reveal:

• 43,556 assaults on a person
• 13,748 offences against a person
• 3,748 sexual assaults
• 59,361 burglaries

Garth McVicar from the Sensible Sentencing Trust says:

In New Zealand we have Judges releasing dangerous ‘things’ on bail who go onto murder. The murderer gets a bulk-discount for any previous crimes committed leading up to the murder, and while executing the murder. The offender also gets a further discount if he pleads guilty or says sorry and offers to attend a Restorative Justice Conference. And if he writes a letter of apology to the family – well we probably won’t even send him to prison, poor thing!

“And the Judge who granted him bail in the first place continues in his job, totally unassailable for the horrendous attack and loss of life his actions made possible.”

“Give me a dog any day.”

We need to end Simon power’s conitnuations of Labour;s “catch and release” criminal justice system. We shoot crazed killers called pit bulls without much wailing or whining when they attack children, perhaps we could treat the mongrels, whose predations on our society mark them as animals, exactly like them.

There are various people out there trying to fathom the rapid drop in crime in the US. Charles Murray is one and produces this graph and suggests as the graph does that increased incarceration has been one of the leading causes for crime dropping and that we should keep locking them up:

Another commentator however thinks that marriage may not be the big factor that people previously thought it was in controlling criminal urges, and that we certainly shouldn’t be looking purely at incarceration rates as a reason why crime is dropping:

For examples, since the early-to-mid-1990s, out-of-wedlock births have increased from less than 30 percent of all births to more than 40 percent of all births today. Yet during that period almost every other social indicator — including crime, drug use, welfare, education test scores, teen suicides, divorce, and abortion –improved. In some areas, like crime and welfare, the progress has the dimensions of a sea change.

It seems that marriage may not actually matter anymore.

Of course they could both be wrong and just manipulating statistics to tell silly stories.

Can you identify this alleged Christmas present stealer who was filmed absconding from Woodlyn Drive, Karaka, Auckland?

Details have been plastered all over Facebook by a neighbour of the victim. When I wrote this post last night it had been shared 756 times.

This scumbag has just robbed our neighbour of all their xmas presents this afternoon at 12:30pm. Then was stupid enough to walk in front of our security camera. I am hoping to send this viral so we can track down who this is. Can everyone share this link on their homepage so we can nail this son of a bitch. If anyone can identify this person let me know and I will pass the information on to the police.

I am opposed to the death penalty anyway but there is mounting evidence to suggest it is a waste of resources.

Their report showed that since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution. As of 2009, prosecuting death-penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714—the largest in the country—account for $144 million in annual extra costs. If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000, and California’s taxpayers will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates.

Judith Collins has introduced legislation to increase the amount that Corrections can dock prisoners pay and apply it to the direct costs of their incarceration:

Currently Corrections can take 30 per cent of a paycheck from a prisoner’s work-to-release programme, up to $269 a week.

“This law change, should it go through, would enable Corrections to charge any prisoner who is earning income in the same way, whether it be through self-employment or an interest in farms or commercial property,” Corrections Minister Judith Collins said.

The bill would not be passed until the next parliamentary term, she said.

“It would be an irresponsible Parliament that didn’t think that prisoners in those situations should be contributing to the vast expense in keeping them locked up.

“If they’re using time in prison to make money, why wouldn’t we expect the taxpayer to be reimbursed? They get a free office, free board, free food.”

Ms Collins said she was not against prisoners working because it helped rehabilitation.

The bill would leave it in the hands of the prison manager and chief executive to decide if the work was appropriate.

“Clearly it would have to be something that was legal,” Ms Collins said.

The Inland Revenue Department would also be able to deduct money from prisoners’ wages for child support bills.

Good work from our Police Minister, Judith Collins.

The recorded murder rate has dropped by almost 50 per cent in the last year – the lowest since 1986, according to figures released by police today.

There were 34 murders recorded in the last year, compared to 65 the year before. Of those, 20 were recorded as being family violence related – down from 35 in the previous year.

Overall, recorded crime in New Zealand has dropped by 5.8 per cent in the same period.

There were 416,324 total recorded offences from July 1 last year through to June 30 this year, a decrease of 25,636.

The largest decreases were in Canterbury (-14.6 percent), Southern (-10.3 percent), Tasman (-8.4 percent), Central (-6.7 percent) and Waitemata (-6.1 percent).

Pita Sharples thinks the justice system discriminates against Maori:

For most Maori New Zealand justice is unfair, biased and prejudiced, says Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples who has announced a plan to push for a review of the entire system.

In a statement he said the system including, police, courts and corrections “systematically discriminates against Maori”.

Maori offenders were arrested at three times the rate of non Maori for the same crimes, he said.

They were also more likely to have police contact, to be charged, to lack legal representation, not to be granted bail, to plead guilty and to be convicted, said Sharples.

A transformed justice system should include Maori practices, principles and programmes “by Maori, for Maori, with Maori”.

Interesting outlook. Has he stopped for just a moment and thought that perhaps Maori are discriminating against society by their constant criminal predations against it? It is little wonder then that the law rubs up against Maori in a “disproportionate” manner when all the evidence before us suggests that Maori “disproportionately” commit crimes against society as a whole.

I’ll start listening to Pita Sharples when he starts talking and doing something meaningful about Maori child abuse and Maori child neglect.

• 51% of male prisoners are maori, It should be 15%.
• 70% have come through Child Youth and Family before hitting Corrections.
• 50-60% of children in CYF care are Maori.

From the development of earthquake after-shock software has come new software that can predict high crime areas:

Large earthquakes are unpredictable, but the aftershocks that follow are not and their occurrence can be predicted with mathematical models. It occurred to Dr. George Mohler, one of the Santa Clara mathematicians, that criminal activity might not be random and that, similar to aftershocks, some crimes might be predicted by other crimes that precede them. The reasoning is based on the assumption that crimes are clustered – it’s what police call ‘hotspots.’ Burglaries will occur in the same area and at the same houses because the vulnerabilities of that area will be known to the burglars. Gang violence is also clustered. A gang shooting will often trigger retaliatory shootings.

Using the aftershocks-inspired algorithms Dr. Mohler and his team came up with a model, then sought to test it. In collaboration with the LAPD they plugged in data on 2,803 residential burglaries occurring within a block of the San Fernando valley 11 miles by 11 miles throughout 2004. For a given day the software calculated the top 5 percent of city blocks most likely to be burglarized. The results convinced the LAPD that, had they been using the program, they could have prevented a quarter of burglaries across the entire test region for that day.

The current, real world test of the software involves generating a map of the city areas most likely to be burglarized, the time of day they are most likely to get hit, and deploying personnel accordingly. The software is recalibrated every day when burglaries from the previous day are added to the dataset. They don’t actually expect to catch people in the act, but to deter more crimes with more effective patrolling. The test that is underway will be evaluated at six months, but already the data is encouraging. Zach Friend, crime analyst for Santa Cruz police, confirmed to the New York Times that the program led to five arrests in July. Even more impressive, compared to July 2010 burglaries, the number of July 2011 burglaries are down 27 percent. Whether or not that trend holds remains to be seen, but so far it appears that being in the wrong place at the right time works.

Hmmm…will the NZ Police look at setting up a pre-cog department?

It seems to me that the continuation of the UK riots comes about because of the long term neutering of the police by liberal panty-waists. That has led to the Police being timid.

The question that hangs over British policing is this: have the number of investigations, inquiries and tragic mistakes left the force fearful of disapproval, of being accused of insensitivity? Have they lost their determination to act swiftly and resolutely?

The European experience is instructive. It is true that no police force gets public order right all the time.

Last year the French police had to deal with wide-scale protests over pension reform. Certainly in Paris they deployed large numbers of CRS riot police and gendarmes. Often the numbers of police overwhelmed the protesters. The impression given was that the police wanted to intimidate protestors from starting unrest.

At demonstrations they employed snatch-squads: teams of up to 10 men in plain clothes who went into a crowd and pulled out those they regarded as “les casseurs” – “the breakers”.

Again they were pro-active when demonstrations ended. One night I watched them swamp La Place de la Bastille. They liberally and sometimes controversially used pepper spray and tear gas but they psychologically had the upper hand and those who might have had riot in mind dispersed.

Hit them hard, with overwhelming force, soon breaks their resolve to throw stones.

What emerges is that there is never one answer to unrest. What does appear important is the mindset of the police officers and their units. In order to be bold and assertive they need to be confident, and confidence grows from public and political support.

For part of the battle on the streets is psychological. A mob smells uncertainty. In Hackney yesterday young men attacked shops within sight of police lines. They felt the streets belonged to them. That, too, is the lesson from Europe. History or controversy weighs heavily on forces facing unrest.

There is no excuse for rioting. It should be crushed without mercy. Violent civil disobedience must be met with force. Perhaps we could loan the UK government Crusher to sort out the rioters.

Given Phil Goff’s new found love for tough justice like shooting looters and shackling them to shovels for 18 hours a day, I wonder what he proposes for the 15 gang members arrested today in police raids?

a. Put them in stocks
b. Brand them
c. Cut off their hands
d. Stone them
e: The aforementioned summary execution or shackling to shovels