Law and order was a major concern of voters going into the 2023 Election – to be fair, it's usually on the minds of voters going into any election campaign, but particularly the last one. Voters had had a guts full of doing things a different way. Of policing by consent, of giving authority to the gangs and then seeing them take over towns.
We had guts full of seeing young kids ram raiding, of seeing neighbourhood crime increase. You saw numerous community Facebook pages showing kids as young as 10 being driven around by older people, breaking into homes, stealing what they could find. People were sick and tired of it, and they were sick and tired too of judges letting young punks walk away from their crimes and their responsibilities.
They wanted the authorities to ensure consequences were in place when offenders broke the law. The coalition partners may have their differences, when it comes to law and order though, National, Act, and New Zealand First were, and still are, singing from the same song sheet. They all wanted to go hard in direct contrast to Labour who wanted to and did empty the prisons.
Under Labour, incarceration rates plummeted from 213 people per 100,000 in 2018, which is near the highest in the OECD to 149 per 100,000. Although victims of crime increased by 12%. So unfortunately, treating people kindly, nicely with compassion didn't seem to be working terribly well.
Labour's reforms were part of an overall goal to reduce the prison population by 30% by 2.
