Since the gang killing of a 2 year-old in Wanganui, the city's reported crime has dropped 4 percent.
Is that all?
"...Police were boosted by the arrests. There were more than 60 arrests [of gang members and associates] during the inquiry, which has had a big impact on gangs' local offending. But crime not associated with gangs goes on."
"...And despite international media attention stirring images of Wanganui being a troubled city on the brink of a gang war, reported crime in the city dropped by 4 per cent from the shooting until November last year."
The shooting happened in May so in the following 6 months, when the police activity was at its most intense, reported crime dropped only 4 percent.
Mr MacLeod [area commander inspector] said reported crime always dropped when there were extra police in a city for a major inquiry.
"It goes against the argument that extra numbers don't make a difference - well, it does."
Not much though. Hard to make an economic argument for extra numbers based on that result. Either the gangs weren't responsible for a large chunk of the crime in the first place, or when the police were otherwise occupied, other crime increased.
And of course if I fail to mention it someone else will. This is only 'reported' crime. The vast majority of violent victimisation goes unreported.
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3 comments:
Your point about unreported crime is interesting as it is possible that this is the reason for the drop being only 4%.
With a higher police presence it is possible that the % of crime reported is higher...
The front page of the Dom this mornign had a puff piece on the mother of the little girl who was shot. Her little girl's death was not a random incident. She lived in a gang house with a gang member who had himself been involved in the incidents that started the whole affair (if there can be a start point for gang tit-for-tat fueds). She must surely have to have some blame for putting her child in a risk situation.
Brian Smaller
The Herald article had no real numbers: increase in police, gang members not only arrested but actually taken off the street... Pretty hard to draw big conclusions one way or the other. I've yet to see any real study of the elasticity of crime with respect to police numbers in NZ. The best American numbers put it at about 33%: a 10% increase in the number of police reduces crime by 3.3%. I'd expect the elasticity here to be higher as we have fewer police here to start with. But again, I haven't seen the study.
I wonder if the detailed stats are available to do a proper study here. I'd want to compare police/crime numbers in Wanganui to those in other areas, controlling for demographics and prior crime rates. Hmm. Could make for an interesting honours project assignment.
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