Mike's Minute: Crime policy Part Two was a sham

Here's a small insight into how these things work. The Government, now in full panic mode as they head towards election defeat, rounds up all the stuff they look weak on and then sets about making announcements about how what they have been doing for six years doesn’t count. That's what led to getting part two of the law and order reset. The trick is to spread the news so you get, in this case, three days worth of headlines. Plus, the best is first, which is why announcement number two was so sad. It unfortunately doesn’t bode well for thought bubble number three tomorrow. Anyway, thought bubble number two was to build some new youth justice centres. Two of them. They want to separate out 17-year-olds from younger kids. It's not really original and something they could have done anytime in the past six years. But guess what? They didn’t. So, when are these new facilities going to get built? Answer - there is no timeframe. So it's a sort-of KiwiBuild approach to youth justice. Then, enter Kelvin “let them out and give them ankle bracelets” Davis. He is changing a couple of things. One is that police can automatically refer a kid to a family group conference after a ram raid, as opposed, I suppose, to just letting them go. But I am wondering, given our experience of these conferences where nothing happens, whether that actually changes crime, or just produces a lot more conferences? And Kelvin's other big reveal was that young thugs can be searched. This was a surprise because, call me foolish and old fashioned, but I had assumed all thugs get searched automatically. But given they weren't and, as it turns out, the rules say basically no one could, guess what? A whole bunch of illegal stuff got smuggled in. Who would have thought? So, we got an announcement of some building with no deadline and more meetings. Watch the ram raids stop and the criminals quake. Or not.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.