The police and gangs: like bowtruckles on doxy eggs.

The National Party has recently released a policy statement about gangs. There are promises about raiding gangs on a regular basis to uncover potential wrongdoing and stopping welfare payments if people have assets they cannot explain.
All policies start with a list of objectives which, in this case, are documented as:

• Keeping people safe.
• Reducing crime.
• Rehabilitation while in prison.
• A social investment approach, including making a difference to vulnerable and at-risk New Zealanders by using targeted interventions based on evidence of what works.

Policy proposals don’t usually immediately follow the list of agreed outcomes. Usually, there is a period of really getting to the bottom of what the problem is that we want to solve, so that the subsequently developed proposals speak directly to resolving those problems.
The only evidence of a problem definition in the policy document on gangs is the statement that the number of patched gang member has risen 26% since Labour took office, and there is nothing to say where this figure came from.
International studies suggest that there are four key issues which make gangs powerful and there are some effective ways of addressing those issues.  
1. The problem: the ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors which mean that disenfranchised youth are more likely to swell the numbers in gangs and keep the gangs going.

• Policy proposal: identifying those most at risk and running interference with the pipeline or ‘flow’ of new members. This would reduce the size of gangs, and crime, over time and takes a social investment approach.
• Some evidence: here.   

2. The problem: the need for identity (ethnic, turf and in prison) in the context of poverty and despair. The majority of gang members in Aotearoa New Zealand are Māori and Pacific from deprived communities and dysfunctional families.

• Policy proposal: What works is giving gang members something else worth living for. Police harassment does not work, as it can help unify gang members against an obvious ‘enemy’ as well as drive gang activity either underground or to another area. The preferred method of gang suppression in America today is the "Weed and Seed" program. This combines police enforcement (weeding out the worst gang members) with community activism and economic opportunities (seeding the neighbourhood with the means to overcome negative conditions).
• Some evidence: here and here.
  

3. The problem: drugs. So long as there is demand for drugs, there will be supply including domestic manufacture or transnational importing, whether or not street gangs or some other elements of organised crime are involved.
Making drug production and importation more difficult results in only the biggest and most efficient drug syndicates surviving in the market. Their competition is driven away and they are granted monopoly power in the black market, making them thrive. When a government cracks down to reduce the supply of drugs, drug suppliers sell more or less the same quantity as before (because there is a never-ending supply), but at higher prices. This often leads to even larger drug sales and revenues than before.  A drug war that focuses disproportionately on supply reduction tends to strengthen and enrich – rather than weaken and impoverish – the operations of drug suppliers.

• Policy proposal: as well as plain old police work to find domestic manufacture and to prevent importing at the border, develop ways to find out who is demanding the drugs and what interventions could reduce that demand.

• Some evidence: here and here.

4. The problem: guns. What is the size of the problem in New Zealand with regard to illegal guns being used in crimes and where are they getting them? In 2011, the Police reported that the source of most illicit firearms in New Zealand was residential burglaries. "While there are knowledge gaps around the extent to which illicit firearms are imported, there is no evidence of any organised criminal links to large-scale imports ... or to the international firearms black market," the Police’s report said.

• Policy proposal: Canadian measures to reduce the threat of guns used by gang members are two-fold. If the gun violence has a "group" component then all members of a group are held responsible for the actions of any single member. And there is a focus on those who are on probation or with warrants for arrest, no matter how minor. This ‘pulling levers’ strategy is effective because it is not the severity of punishment that deters illegal behaviour but rather it is the certainty of detection and punishment.

• Some evidence: here and here.

A reasoned and evidenced-based approach to problem identification is critical to finding solutions that have a chance of successfully achieving objectives, including with gangs. My Public Policy 101 training courses devotes three sessions to the role of defining the problem. The issue of gangs will be one of our case studies.