By Ted Johnston BSc BA LLB Deputy Leader of New Conservative

“As a criminal barrister of over 30 years working in South Auckland, I deal with crime on a daily basis. I see what works and what doesn’t, and what really happens on the ground.” states Ted Johnston.

The first duty of a government is to protect the people, and when government fails to protect the people it loses its legitimacy.

JUSTICE

“New Conservative will move on two main fronts. First and most urgently, protect the public by suppression of current crime, using fast and efficient policing, processing through the courts and justice system. Secondly by addressing the factors driving crime.”

One of the biggest current problems is the extreme delay due to gross underfunding of the Justice system. New Conservative will make it efficient again by ensuring we have enough judges, court staff and courtrooms to deal with offenders, as well as probation staff and rehabilitation services.

The huge rise in crime must be dealt with, and developing areas of crime need to be targeted, eg ram raids and store robberies. There will be no electronic sentences for these targeted crimes, only imprisonment. Ram raids will all be upgraded to aggravated burglaries with a 14 year maximum. There will be no slap on the wrist for this offending, as consequences will deter. Mere youth will not prevent consequences.

New Conservative believes that prison is an important tool to keep society safe from dangerous and hardened criminals. We will ensure that serious crime is rewarded with serious consequences and will seek to fix any aspects of the justice system which are failing and causing criminals to be on the street committing crime when they should have been locked up.

However from a third to a half of prisoners are not convicted but awaiting trial, another failure and cost of a slow clogged system. We only want the worst offenders locked up, not those who pose little danger to the public. Breaches of bail will be dealt with by short terms of imprisonment, not long times on remand awaiting trial.

New Conservative believes that rehabilitation must become the major focus for those in prison. Rehabilitation with work training and education will be available in prison. It should not be wasted time.

Prevention

Prevention is better than just cleaning up later, and we believe that the driving factors of crime need to be addressed, in particular family breakdown and alcohol and drug abuse. Our focus will be on addressing these areas, including:

- building strong families, supporting for example relationship and parenting training.

- early intervention for at-risk youth.

- fit for purpose education and training, including pathways for trades training and early entry to the workforce.

- effective mental health alcohol and drug services.

POLICING

The police services are underfunded and undermanned. There needs to be sufficient competent, well trained and remunerated police to fix the problem of shortages and loss of skilled officers. Low crime rates often reflect insufficient police investigating crime. There will be a big increase in police numbers.

New Conservative will ensure that police will be on the beat in main centres and areas of concern especially at night, to keep the streets safe.

There will be fast response teams, to deal with robberies at stores.

Police will spend less time ticketing low-level driving offences.

Gangs

These organised criminal organisations will be targeted. Their assets will be scrutinised. There will be an increased focus on the criminal proceeds of crimes to shut the profits from crime down. Gang patches will be banned, and aggressive threatening by gang groups of the public will not be tolerated. No gangs will be allowed to take over towns. Use of non-association conditions will be used to keep gang members apart.

501’s will be stopped as they bring more professional overseas criminals to increase the skills of local criminals and create tighter links to organised international cartels.

“New Conservative will make all honest New Zealanders feel safer”, states Ted Johnston.

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