Saturday, November 28, 2015

Using police as arbiters of family disputes

Here's a familiar statement from today's NZ Herald:

Statistics show New Zealand has the highest rate of intimate partner violence in the OECD and on average police respond to a family violence incident every five minutes.

Do the maths. That's just over 105,000 'incidents' annually.

But here are some other stats to lay alongside.

Annual imprisonments for:

Acts intending to cause injury - 1,387
Sexual assault and related offences - 434
Dangerous or negligent acts endangering persons - 77
Homicide and related offences - 50
Abduction, harassment and other offences against the person - 189

All of the above might result from family violence incidents. I have purposefully gone to the other extreme ie the worst offences as demonstrated by an imprisonment outcome.

So a maximum of 2,137 men and women are imprisoned due to family violence incidents.

I understand that many many more will be charged and prosecuted and sentenced to lesser punishments but my thesis remains (as it does with child abuse and neglect statistics).

A good chunk of the calls to police represent individuals resorting to authority arbitration and administration of family disputes. As people have increasingly become dependent on the 'benevolent' welfare state so they have lost the initiative and intelligence to sort their own shit out.

2 comments:

JC said...

A good chunk of those calls come from neighbours who can't bear the racket any more. The perpetrators nearly always seem surprised when the cops arrive.. to them its no big deal and nobody's business what they do on their property and with their property.

Its alcohol of course but behind that theres not a lot to work with..

JC

Jigsaw said...

I think that it takes a couple of generations-perhaps three before the welfare state causes real damage to society. The generation who lived through the depression (my parents generation) were thankful for a hand-up but were proud of the fact that they soon got away from dependence on the state and made the following generation have real aspirations for the future. They also taught that to the next generation but from thereon the will to stay free of dependence on the state seems to have been lost. I believe that the originators of the welfare state would be appalled at the present situation and marvel that we tolerate it.