So, the government calls an election, and just days later, Phil Goff is banging the law and order drum, suggesting banning gangs. You couldn't get a clearer example of the way politicians try and exploit fear, posture as "tough on crime", and offer kneejerk "solutions" in an effort to win votes.
Goff's solution is modelled on a South Australian law, which allows the government to declare a group to be a criminal organisation, then ban its members from associating, communicating, or being in certain places (including public places and events - "downtown Wanganui", say, or "the 2008 election"). All of this is done without any judicial oversight, on the whim of the Minister and advice of police; the only time a court really gets involved is when the orders are breached, when they get to stick the victim in jail for five years for visiting his mum or going to the supermarket (the control orders are formally issued by a magistrate, however they must make them, so they're simply acting as a rubber-stamp for the police). This paradigm of rubber-stamp "justice" and "law" by executive fiat deeply alien to our judicial culture, pisses all over the Bill of Rights Act, and grants carte blanche to the police without any checks and balances. I can see why Phil Goff would like that - he's the driving force behind the government's similarly rubber-stamp asset forfeiture regime - but I don't see why the rest of us should. This sort of legislation is unacceptable for terrorists, and it is unacceptable for ordinary criminals. It has absolutely no place in a democratic society.
(And that's not even getting into the question of whether it would actually work, or whether it would simply drive gangs underground where they're harder to keep track of. And its worth noting at this point that the South Australian law is explicitly aimed at forcing gangs to leave the state and making them someone else's problem...)
It's also worth noting that the police already have draconian powers in this area. Section 98A of the Crimes Act imposes a penalty of five years imprisonment for participating in an "organised criminal group", defined as
a group of 3 or more people who have as their objective or one of their objectives —Of course, to secure a conviction, the police actually have to go to court and present evidence that a group carries out such activities, and that the person knowingly participated in it, rather than simply going to the Minister and threatening to have their sockpuppet Greg O'Connor slag them off for being "soft on crime" if she doesn't do what they want. But that's as it should be; punishing people should require strong evidence and full judicial safeguards. Otherwise, we open ourselves to miscarriages of justice and abuses of power. And we have quite enough of those already.(a) obtaining material benefits from the commission of offences that are punishable by imprisonment for a term of 4 years or more; or
(b) obtaining material benefits from conduct outside New Zealand that, if it occurred in New Zealand, would constitute the commission of offences that are punishable by imprisonment for a term of 4 years or more; or
(c) the commission of serious violent offences (within the meaning of section 312A(1)) that are punishable by imprisonment for a term of 10 years or more; or
(d) conduct outside New Zealand that, if it occurred in New Zealand, would constitute the commission of serious violent offences (within the meaning of section 312A(1)) that are punishable by imprisonment for a term of 10 years or more.
