Harawira Hone: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — Second Reading 
Harawira Hone: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6293] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe. Kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare. In following on from my colleague David Garrett who has just graduated from the “Barney Rubble School of Criminology” I say that there are some more enlightened issues and speakers on the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill in the House today and I congratulate them on their comments. 
Last Tuesday some 300 locals gathered in Wanganui to protest the local council decision to ban gang insignia within city boundaries. One of the locals a man with a social conscience and no gang affiliation called the decision “an erosion of civil liberties and a cheap publicity stunt by our mayor masquerading as his attempt to solve a tragic social dilemma”. There is no question that gangs are a tragic social dilemma and the social cost of their activities is reason enough for action. 
Contributing 8 percent of court charges and 18 percent of the prison population the Government’s gang strategy is costing the country nearly $200 million a year. That strategy has some interesting history including Rob Muldoon’s interventions way back in the early 1970s; the 1979 Select Committee on Violent Offending; the 1981 committee of inquiry into gangs out of which came the Group Employment Liaison Scheme; and the 1987 commission chaired by Justice Sir Clinton Roper. Here we are now in 2009 with a new plan to take away the patches knock down the high fences make gang affiliation a factor at sentencing expand police surveillance powers up the penalties and cross our fingers that things will change. The background to this bill can be summed up in just a few words: wave a stick and if that does not work wave a bigger stick. 
This bill unfortunately is all about penalties and punishment yet all the research tells us that the heavy-handed approach that was adopted in Los Angeles for example led to a huge increase in the number of gangs and gang crimes while over in New York a different strategy of community development educational opportunity and urban renewal has led to a massive decrease in gang activity. That is why the Maori Party supports more positive and effective strategies for dealing with gang activity. We know that we have to address crime by dealing to the causes not just reacting to the effects. 
I know that Pete Sharples and his crew have been working hard with networks to address some of the more disturbing issues associated with youth gangs in South Auckland through community initiatives built around employment and education schemes. I know too that youth gangs do not always buy into a lot of the youth at risk and Fresh Start programmes that work for others so it is good to see some innovative stuff being done to change attitudes in youth gangs and indeed to change the very nature of gang culture. So I say big ups to Pete his Te Puni Kokiri crew and the outside connections as well for focusing on turning kids to the positive rather than just trying to bash the negative out of them. 
The evidence is clear. The programmes that are effective in turning kids away from crime are the ones that give them a belief in themselves and hope for the future. That is where we should be focusing our attentions our strategies our resources and our energies: investing in literacy education stable employment decent housing and the elimination of institutional racism. We should also focus on helping communities to respect one another to care for their neighbours to watch out for everyone else’s kids and to turn themselves around. 
Another concern we had was the proposed amendment to lower the test of gang association as an aggravating factor at sentencing so that instead of having to be involved in a gang or be a gang participant an accused could be sentenced based on the nature and extent of any connection between the accused the offence and gangs. It would be kind of like hauling Minister Paula Bennett over the judicial coals if one of her hoodlum in-laws brought drugs into her house convicting Shane Jones because he knew of one of his whanau putting the bash on somebody else who had threatened one of his daughters Tau Henare ending up in court because one of his outlaws ran him out to the airport in a stolen car or Georgina te Heuheu—maybe not Georgie but members know what I mean. 
It is not just men either; it is women too. The women’s prison population has doubled over the last decade and unfortunately 60 percent are Maori. Indeed just last month a book came out called  
Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangs 
. It is a story of a unique and unruly bunch of women with varying gang affiliations who lived together and stood side by side in a world that did not care a jot about their existence their lives their experiences their struggles with poverty and their hassles with the police. The final chapter contains a quote that fits right here: “Being Maori was always their foundation stone. But now for most it’s their search their journey their passion and their healing.” 
I stand proudly alongside the Maori Party in opposing this bill because it is a reaction based on ignorance and fear. I stand against it because it is based on failed theories of punitive action over positive thinking and I stand against it because it will not lead to a more just society. It will in fact lead to greater injustice and a greater reaction to that injustice. 
But I make one small concession. I watched TV on the first night of the ban in Whanganui and I saw all the brothers gathered in town. I have to say they looked different. They did not look mean they did not look threatening and they did not look like a volcano ready to explode. In fact they just looked like whanau like a lot of my cousins and friends from all around the country. Yet those same guys when they are patched up and scarfed up with hoodies on and gloved fists pumping the air in anger and defiance look like a-holes and they often act like a-holes to fit the image. I liked what I saw that first night after the ban. It is just a pity that this bill is all stick and no carrot because I know as I suspect most MPs in this House know that we have to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative if we want to latch on to the affirmative or we will certainly get messed up by Mr In-Between. Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tatou e te Whare.