Gangs of New Zealand

This is a somewhat belated response to two intriguing news stories, typically milked for political gain in an election year, which you can read here and here. To summarise, members of the Black Power gang, one of the major gangs in New Zealand, and a group of gang wives and girlfriends (the Aroha Trust) have lodged claims with the Waitangi Tribunal, claiming that colonisation -leading to cultural alienation, economic despair, impoverishment and abuse - is the root cause of these particular gangs. Both groups have made it clear that they are not seeking financial compensation, but want to have their story told and made public by drawing on the Tribunal's function as a 'truth and reconciliation' forum. Politicians' responses have been quick and severe: this makes a mockery of the Tribunal process; the colonisation argument is old hat; people in gangs are criminals and made a choice to be so; what about the victims of gang crime - when do they get their hearing?; the Treaty is with iwi and hapu so the Tribunal shouldn't hear them and so on and so on.

Obviously, it is up to the Tribunal, as an independent Commission of Inquiry, to decide what it will and won't hear. Nonetheless, the Tribunal has often reported on socio-economic issues arising from landlessness and de-tribalisation in its district inquiries. The Tribunal also reports on generic issues affecting all Maori, such as, for example, the loss and effects of the loss of te reo Maori (Wai 11, a summary of which can be read here). It is historically well-documented that Maori, in the second half of the twentieth century, became increasingly urbanised, pursuing economic opportunities in the cities aways from their rural bases and often losing their tribal links in the process. The development of urban marae and national Maori organisations were some of the positive means of maintaining collective links and forging new ones in response to the challenges of the urban experience. As New Zealand's socio-economic statistics in crime, health, education and housing indicate, however, many fell through the cracks, including those who joined gangs such as Black Power and the Mongrel Mob. It has been argued that, in a negative sense, part of the attraction of gangs derives from a similar sense of collective connection: one which conferred identity and solidarity in an alien and alienating urban environment.

There has been and continues to be a gang presence in New Zealand, and it would be naive to suggest that people shouldn't be held accountable for their crimes. The political response to the recent prominent spates of gun and gang crime has been predictable: 'let's get tough' rhetoric from both political parties, who talk about outlawing gangs and implementing 'two strikes and you're out - got to jail - do not pass Go' policies. I'm not suggesting a Tribunal hearing will be a cure-all by any stretch of the imagination - but is it such a bad idea to hear from gang members and their relatives directly? Why not hear directly from the people affected about their experiences, what they think causes people to join gangs and what might be some possible deterrents? Surely, this might offer some options to similarly disaffected young people exploring their 'choices' in straitened circumstances.

A great thinker once wrote:

'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past (Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852)'.

Or, to translate into the political terms used in this debate, 'people have the agency to make their own free choices, but the choices they have on offer are defined, limited and constrained by the circumstances in which they find themselves'. Given the wealth of historical research generated both by New Zealand historians in their own work and for Tribunal inquiries, is it really such a stretch to say that the circumstances in which gangs exist, 'given and transmitted from the past' include colonisation and its aftermath? Don't we need to have some understanding and acknowledgment of those circumstances before we can fully understand people's apparently free choices? Explanation is not excuse, but it seems to me to be a good place to start, particularly if New Zealand is really serious about addressing The Gang Problem.