Changing laws and dishing out harsher penalties will do nothing to address the reasons young offenders engage in criminal activity.

University of Auckland criminology expert Dr Ronald Kramer tells the Front Page podcast that making knee-jerk legal or policy changes when emotions are running high won't lead to better laws.

"If you look at ram raids, for example, we already have laws in place to address that and you don't need to go about creating law ad-hoc because some behaviour suddenly changes," Kramer says.

Following a sharp increase in ram raids in recent months, commentators have been calling for harsher penalties to dissuade young people from engaging in this type of behaviour.

Kramer argues that changing laws in response to emotionally charged rhetoric is not the right way to go about crafting a rational, coherent body of laws.

"It's never a good idea to make major policy changes on the basis of some randomised or particular events. You need to think systematically on the whole."

Kramer says that rather than imposing harsher punishments and stigmatising certain actions, you need to look into the motivations behind the behaviour you're trying to change.

"One of the difficulties with the concept of crime is that there are many different forms of offending and there are many different types of motivation for those different types of offending," he says.

"So if somebody is hungry and they're stealing food as a result of that, it's pretty easy to address that level of motivation. You just feed that person."

While motivations vary across crimes, Kramer says that economic or material deprivation tends to be strong motivators in many instances.

Studies have shown that if you can address the underlying deprivation, you can often reduce the level of crime without having to dish out harsher punishments.

One example he points to involves a study in which a group of people in a community beset by drug trafficking was just given a certain sum of money.

"It pretty much stopped a lot of the drug dealing that was going on," says Kramer, explaining that their motivation was driven by the need to make ends meet.

Kramer admits that it's easy to come up with ideas designed to address the deprivations leading to crime, but the challenge lies in finding the political will to bring those policies to fruition.

"[Economic deprivation] should be pretty easy to fix, theoretically, but it's incredibly difficult politically. If I had to say: 'Look, you're better off giving three people $30,000 a year than spending $90,000 to keep one person in prison for whatever offence, there will be outrage over that – even if it's more rational."

It's often far easier to get support for ideas derived from the strong emotions related to certain type of offending.

In announcing its law and order policy earlier this week, the Act party suggested giving retailers some power to decide what punishment young shoplifters should receive. The political party also suggested introducing a new three strikes rule applicable to burglars.

The Act Party's suggestions come in direct response to the growing concerns about crime across the country.

Asked whether he thought giving retailers a say in deciding punishments to address problems like shoplifting or the proliferation of ram raiders, Kramer wasn't convinced.
"Such a suggestion is antithetical to basic legal principles," he said.

"I think anybody who makes these kinds of suggestions probably shouldn't be in politics. Let me put it this way, could you imagine if the punishment was determined by having victims of the crime participate in all these sentencing outcomes? It would be a legal disaster.

"A strong, good body of laws should be premised upon reason, rationality and fundamental legal principles of fairness."

The concerns about young offenders and ram raiders also come at a time when there has been enormous scrutiny on politician Sam Uffindell's offending when he was at school.

Despite the fact that Uffindell's offending at school was also violent, many conservative commentators have questioned the media scrutiny given the offending was committed when he was young and he has since apologised to the victim – the argument being that he doesn't deserve to be punished too harshly for actions committed when he was young.

"What you see here is two penal logics. On the one hand, we see the need for rehabilitation and reintegration and on the other, we see calls for harsh punitive responses."

Kramer says there's often a clear line drawn between those who deserve the former and those who deserve the latter.

"We get calls for rehabilitation, forgiveness and second chances when it's white privileged men who engage in violent behaviour or some other kind of criminal offending, and calls for harsh, punitive policies when it's people from marginalised communities… There are these double standards that correspond to our social order."

Kramer says that the contrast in reactions to the Uffindell situation and ram raids goes a long way to illustrate this divide.

"Imagine if one of [Uffindell's] kids was 13 and they got bashed by a gang of 16-year-olds. Do you think conservatives are going to say: 'Oh, let's focus on reintegration.' Of course not. In fact, the ram raids are typically conducted by people younger than 15, and they're calling for harsh punishment. It's complete hypocrisy and it's so transparent."

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