Ask the people in the street about the "drivers of crime".

Kevin Hicks is angry that his group has not been invited to the drivers of crime meeting at parliament next week.

“We help residents fight crime all over the largest multicultural city in the country”, says Kevin, Chairperson of Neighbourhood Support Auckland City.

“I have sent numerous emails outlining our position in detail to the ministers involved from all parties but have had only automated form letters in reply” he says.

Kevin is concerned the meeting is just the same Wellington bureaucrats and QANGOs talking to each other as usual. People in the streets affected by crime are very poorly represented.

He is also angry at seeing meeting attendees include the same academics and bureaucrats same spreading misinformation about crime in the NZ Herald on Saturday. “We’ve had to put up with these distortions for the last 50 years” says Kevin who has just completed a review of the official statistics.

“Until we can be honest about crime, we are destined to continue having one of the highest crime rates in the world” he says. “And I see little of that changing from the commentators in the Herald today or the line up at the Parliamentary meeting”.

He laughs off the suggestion by a psychologist that teaching children interpersonal skills by computer will have any effect on crime or our social structure that produces it. “It’s as ludicrous as the scientists who seriously suggested putting mini-reflecting satellites into orbit to protect us from global warming. It’s insulting to even suggest such a thing.”

Kevin supports the former Ombudsman’s call for an impartial royal commission into the criminal justice system with wide ranging terms of reference, including proper measures to tackle organised crime. He thinks we are decades overdue for all voices to be heard on crime. “Why listen to the same people who have presided over an exponential growth in crime for decades? It’s better to ask the residents in the streets about the drivers of crime – no matter what their ethnicity, they speak a special language called “common sense” - something that seems to have been sadly lacking amongst academics in the field for generations.

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