Southern district police are in the early stages of establishing an offenders task force — a group of specialist officers who will work with offenders and police partner agencies to address the causes of crime, acting Southern district commander Superintendent Lane Todd told the Otago Daily Times.
The announcement comes as the latest crime statistics this week showed the district had recorded a 9.8% increase in victims of burglary, an 8.6% increase in victims of robbery and an 8.2% rise in the number of assault victims during the past financial year.
The task force would be in the mould of the successful pilot run in Canterbury for the past six months where a specialist team worked with the district’s worst offenders with the aim of preventing reoffending.
"The offenders task force are concentrated on the top 2% of offenders. In Canterbury, that equated to committing 25% of the crime," Supt Todd said.
The proposal was in its "very early stages" and it was unclear what the final structure of the task force would be and how many staff it would involve, but it was hoped the team would help reduce crime in the Southern district.
"We do a lot of prevention activity with them," he said.
"The task force drills down a little bit further. If we know we have drug offending fuelling burglaries, they target the drug offending.
"It’s a different mindset from our general police staff. It’s not about getting them arrested and putting them before court."
Police would work with outside employers, the Chamber of Commerce and social agencies to address the issues feeding criminal activity, such as a lack of employment, education and drug and alcohol dependency.
They would assess issues holding offenders back from employment and contributing to society such as illiteracy.
It was part of police’s ongoing prevention-first strategy and would feed into other strategies to prevent crime, such as the recently announced national policy to attend all dwelling burglaries.
Another pilot being undertaken in Canterbury district, the integrated safety response to tackle family harm, was being closely watched by police around the country.
The pilot, which began in July, would run for 12 months and had officers taking a long-term view to solving issues in the home.
"Southern district will be keen to learn from any findings from that pilot," Supt Todd said.
"Kids replicate what they see. The role models they will be observing is their parents and what they see in the interactions between them will play out in how they do things as they get older. It’s trying to break that cycle. That’s not a quick fix."
He believed the increase in family violence reporting in the Southern district showed officers were building the trust and confidence of victims.
"One of the big things we have is the trust and confidence and that gets measured on an annual basis. Southern district is still sitting on 82%, which is a very good figure," he said.
Southern police had the resources to tackle the issues facing the district and it was a matter of how they were focused, he said.
The new policy concerning dwelling burglaries was an important deterrent and measure to tackle offending.
"We need to signal to our potential victims and offenders that we will be concentrating on dwelling burglaries in an extremely aggressive fashion because that is seen as a large area of victimisation," he said.
"The current processes and structures we have got in place ensure we can meet that demand. It’s just ensuring we keep that focus."
Burglary was often a litmus test for other issues and that was the reason for the change.
"We need to look at what’s driving that burglary," he said.
"For example, our experience tells us that’s drug-fuelled that’s fuelling the burglaries because those offenders that are having to meet their drug commitments use theft ex cars or burglaries to fund them.
"So while we will be concentrating on dwelling burglaries, we also will be ensuring we are keeping a focus on drug offending because that’s usually what’s driving it."
Specialist team
• Offenders task force to work with criminals to prevent reoffending
• Police to attend all dwelling burglaries
• Attending police to look at wider prevention measures
• Southern police to learn from Canterbury’s "integrated safety response pilot" to tackle family harm.
Advertisement
