Drink, violence offences fall

Press, 26 January 1979, Page 5

Drink, violence offences fall

PA’ Auckland A decade of big increases in violent offending has levelled off and been slightly reduced, a senior police officer has told delegates at the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science. Chief Inspector J. A. Jamieson, the director of police training, said that the level of offending was still unacceptably high.

The number of violent offences reported every year had more than doubled between 1966 and 1976, from 5406 to 11,515. and the rise was matched by the number of arrests for drunkenness, he said.

A levelling-off in the number of drunkenness cases also coincided with that of violent assaults, said Mr Jamieson, and he added, “You can read into that what you wish.” A widely held opinion in the police was that liquor was a big factor in violent behaviour, said Mr Jamieson, although the evidence was clouded. Offenders who were not arrested immediately often used intoxication as a partial excuse for their actions, whether this was true or not.

Mr Jamieson said there was an extraordinary weight of opinion among police officers against the

leniency of many sentences. A survey of 119 officers taken last year showed more than 94 per cent believed sentences were inadequate.

He conceded that an officer did not see probation reports and was not aware of mitigating factors taken into consideration when sentencing.

The predominant view of police officers contrasted with other standpoints, said Mr Jamieson. A former Minister of Justice (Dr A. M. Finlay), for example, had said it was very doubtful whether a reasonable consideration of the likely consequences entered the mind of the offender, and it followed that argument that more severe sentences would in most cases have little or no effect in reducing violence. Mr Jamieson said that while the rate of violent offences had levelled, albeit at an undesirable level, offences of assaulting or obstructing the police had continued to iffcrease. <

Police duty was now fraught with more danger than ever before, he said.

Two serious aspects of the trend were the increasing use of weapons against police and the readiness of gangs to attack them.

Even the routine task of attending a domestic incident was not without danger, said Mr Jamieson. Those involved in a dispute had been known to turn on the police when they arrived at the scene. Mr Jamieson presented statistics which pointed to a disproportionate level of violent offending among Maoris and Polynesians.

He said problems of adapting to city life by immigrant’ or minority groups had been used as the basis for most explanations of high offending rates.

Mr Jamieson agreed with a questioner, however, that there could be other, equally important factors. It was pointed out, for example, that the average age of Maori was unusually low at present. Offending could be more common among them because many were in the 15 to 25 age group, where the number of violent offences was concentrated. It could also be true, said Mr Jamieson, that the question of social class level could be significant. It could be that crimes of violence were more prevalent among those who were less well-off and that Maoris and Polynesians in New Zealand fell into that category.