Reaction to gangs ‘moral panic’

Press, 11 July 1980, Page 18

Reaction to gangs ‘moral panic’

PA Auckland Public reaction to past gang activities has been labelled as a case of “moral panic,” bearing little relationship to the actual threat and encouraged by exaggerated news reports. Partly as a result of this panic, the police had thrown extra resources into the fight against gangs, Parliament had produced stronger legislation, and the Judiciary had used sentencing to attack the gangs, said the director of the Institute of Criminologv at Victoria University (Dr W. A. Young). Speaking at the annual meeting of the Legal Research Foundation in Auckland. Dr Young said he and a co-researcher had been studying the gang issues and reactions to it for about a year.

They were not trying to explain gang behaviour, or suggest solutions, he said, but were examining how people reacted to gangs. Especially during 1979 the gang issue had at

times received a great deal of coverage in the news outlets, said Dr Young, and gangs were sometimes “public enemy No. 1.” particularly after the Moerewa incident The impression of gang activity created largely by the news media was used to justify a more hard-line approach to policing the gangs, he said. These policies were then justified by the apparent fall in gang activity during this year. After a very heavy coverage of gangs by the news media in 1979» reports of gang activity decreased and this year there had been only minimal coverage of gangs, reinforcing the view that their activities had died down. However. Dr Young said his research suggested that there had not been a fall in gang activity this year. He said that in covering crime the news media were, of necessity, very reliant on official sources such as the police and

courts and this meant ver. sions of events were often one-sided.

While the Moerewa affair was a very serious incident, said Dr Young, a false impression of it was given by outlets. The injuries suffered by some of the policemen involved were exaggerated, he said. For example one policeman who. it was reported, was almost burnt to death actually suffered no burn. It was also reported that an unconscious policeman was thrown into a blazing van but it later emerged that the man had actually been pushed half-way into the van and had then been able to get free and get away. News media coverage of gang activities could actually encourage people to join gangs. Dr Young said, in reply to a question. After the Moerewa incident, he said, one Auckland gang had had trouble keeping prospective members out of the gang.