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Posted June 25, 2001
Crime Among the KiwisBy Jonathan Walters
I’ve recently returned from New Zealand, where I spent two weeks checking out their local and national governments, and how Kiwis go about the business of public management and administration. An article in Governing will get into the details later, but there is one initial observation about New Zealand culture that’s worth mentioning here: In reading the local papers in Christchurch and Wellington — both cities of between 300,000 and 400,00 — there was an amazing lack of violent crime. In fact, in the entire time I was there, I didn’t read about a single shooting.
My earliest introduction to Kiwi crime reporting set the tone for my next two weeks reading: It was a front-page police blotter story in the Auckland paper I picked up in the airport on arriving in the country: An 11-year-old had been nabbed at 2 a.m. driving a car ... his mother’s car. She was too drunk to drive, apparently, and so had handed the kid the keys. Think about it: After a Friday night in the country’s largest city, the most heinous crime the paper can find to cover is that a little kid was found at the helm of a big car. “No one was arrested,” the paper reported.
This comes to mind as I come home and read about President Bush’s “Project Safe Neighborhoods” initiative, launched with typical, windy fanfare in Philadelphia last month. It’s another one of those “get tough on gun crimes” initiatives aimed at gun violence that misses the entire point.
Now, I’m not one who believes that the U.S. is ever going to be steered away from its obsession with the right to own and bear firearms. After all, you never know when your state or local government is going to go fascist on you, and you’ll need that old six-shooter to hold the mayor off as he tries to consolidate his power base by taking your garage as an early first step toward building his personal duce.
But I couldn’t help thinking about the cost of gun crime in this country: $550 million over the next two years in that dinky little Bush initiative alone.
And of course, the cash expense is the smallest part of the impact of gun crime here. It’s the toll on our collective psyche that we need to consider. It’s hard to convey unless you’ve visited a place where gun violence isn’t simply illegal, it’s abhorrent to civil society. You wake up in the morning, pick up the paper and there on the front page you learn that the police have tracked down Baby Face Auckland, the cereal chauffeur. Trust me, it’s a great way to start the day.
Jonathan Walters is a staff correspondent for Governing.
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Readers’ Responses:
NO GUNS, NO CRIME
Loved the article, and not only because I'm a Kiwi who is currently working for state government in the USA.
Gun crime in New Zealand is essentially nonexistent. With handguns being illegal, and long guns (rifles, shotguns) being very rare (and almost impossible to conceal), it is hardly surprising. And, something you didn't mention was that the New Zealand Police don't carry guns either ... they don't need to. This fact is always greeted with surprise when I mention it to Americans. That's really a pity!
David G. King
I emigrated to Australia four weeks ago, and found the article fascinating, if a little off track. While we are very proud of the low level of gun crime in New Zealand (especially compared to the United States), it's drawing a pretty long bow to say that there is no crime!
But that's not really the point, is it? The real point is that Kiwis, like people everywhere, don't want crime, and especially violent crime, to get any worse. Perceptions of crime are, like a lot of things, relative. I can remember (heaven forbid!), a year in the sixties when New Zealand (population then of some 2 million), had a murder tally in single figures.
If that means that we appear a little quaint and to be worrying about our present situation, then so be it, I suppose.
Ah, things aren't what they used to be! No wonder we're so much on our guard against the evils of pre-teens cruising the streets of Auckland in the early hours of the morning.
Cheer up, Jonathon. It'll get even better as you head further south!
Michael Willis
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