Absolutely none of us should be surprised that criminals think they can get away with committing crime in front of people in broad daylight at the moment.

I don’t need to list the examples, you know them.

The people walking a supermarket trolley of groceries out of Countdown in Papakura on Sunday.

The guy who took $20K from the safe of a New Plymouth café while the worker was inside and distracted.

The kids with hammers robbing the jewellery store on Queen Street in the middle of the day and the kids flaunting their haul from a ram raid in TikTok videos.

Obviously what’s happening is that these guys are brazen because they think they will get away with it.

They think no one’s going to stop them or catch them, or if they do catch them, no one’s going to punish them.

And that is because right now the authorities are soft on crime. 

They are trying to find alternative ways to punish the bad guys other than charging them, sending them to court, and then sending them to the slammer.

Those figures that Mark Mitchell from the Nats released tell you everything you need to know.

“Over half of young people who offend receive a warning or consent to take part in alternative action.”

What’s alternative action? It’s anything alternative to court.  

Case in point: The 14-year-old ram raider whose mum told the Herald in December that her daughter has been busted committing several ram raids and had even ploughed a stolen car into the rear end of another.

And even though the cops knew about this, she hasn’t been charged. They’ve just sent her to youth aid on several occasions. 

Our authorities seem to want to keep finding ways not to punish people.

The ultimate end point of that is not that the offenders suddenly have a road-of-Damascus moment and realise they should change their ways.

The ultimate end point is that they just keep re-offending because it’s lucrative and fun, but they only get more brazen about it.

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