Dr Jarrod Gilbert Sociologist
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Gangs and Crime II - a response to David Farrar

7/8/2014

5 Comments

 
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Right wing blogger and reasonable bloke David Farrar has confidently challenged my assertion that the gang statistics used to launch the government’s new gang policies were wrong. I claimed the data were bollocks. I said I would eat a suitcase full of carrots if that was incorrect. I stand by it.

It’s not the first time David has run his ruler over my ideas around crime and justice, but it’s the first time we’ve disagreed to such a degree.

Great stuff. Let’s start in prison.

On Monday the Minister said that there are 4,000 gang members in total and that gangs make up 28 percent of the prison population. That means more than one in four people in prison are gang members.  Furthermore, it means that only 1,620 gang members are on the street (given a prison population of around 8,500). So more than half of all gang members are in prison.

Over to you, David, if you can find any credible source who says that is correct then I will cede the entire argument and say you and the Minister can increase my ability to see in the dark.

I spend a lot of time working in prisons and I spend a lot of time with gangs. The prisons are not so full of gang members and not a single gang I know has anywhere remotely close to half of its members inside.  That statistic is bollocks. Let me repeat, the number is wrong – and wildly so.

I could just end it there, but let’s go on.

What the 28 percent prison number represents is gang members as well as gang associates in prison. This makes a massive difference. A few years back The Police Association said gangs and associates numbered 60,000. Associates are difficult. Am I an associate? Is a guy with a brother in the gang an associate? Associates are an arbitrary measure that can capture people not connected to a gang in any meaningful way. Therefore, if you are talking about gangs as ‘membership’ numbers or gangs as ‘members and associates’, then you are talking about very different things. That’s a 4,000 to 60,000 difference. While I think the latter should be avoided, you need to at the very least use one definition or the other and remain consistent. Apples with apples, as they say.

Inflating figures when it comes to gangs is hardly new. In 2009 the Police Association said that the methamphetamine trade was worth $1.5 billion a year, of which they estimated at least 75% was controlled by gangs. Given most gang members (accepting that many are neck deep in the black economy) are hand to mouth people, I wondered where the money was going. It didn’t seem possible, so I did some digging.

I turned to apprehension data compiled by the police and obtained by my lawyer. These statistics were arranged in three, rather ambiguous, categories: Drug (Cannabis Only), Drugs (New Drugs), and Drugs (Not Cannabis). In each of the three years from 2006 to 2008, drug dealing by gang affiliates, as measured by apprehensions for ‘possession for supply’, averaged 9.4 percent of total apprehensions for ‘cannabis only’, 11.5 percent for ‘new drugs’, and 7.6 percent for drugs ‘not cannabis’.

These data will surprise most people because they obviously don’t support the rhetoric of gang dominance of the drug trade. It was for this reason the statistics used by the Minister on Monday looked heavy.

At the time the above data were obtained I spoke to the National Statistics Manager at Police National Headquarters who told me that their data did not include whether or not apprehended persons were gang members as such, but only if the “persons apprehended are known to be affiliated in some way with a gang”, and therefore captured a significantly wider population than just gang members as well as a large degree of offending unrelated to gangs in any meaningful way.

The Minister has almost certainly relied on the police for her data. So unless the police have changed their policy and now take note of gang numbers (not including associates) then the figures are heavily misleading. We are not comparing apples with apples. We are not even comparing apples with pears. We are comparing apples with basketballs. It is fundamentally dishonest.

So, David, you have close links with the Minister. You were sent her data. You have used it to say that I am wrong. Ask her. Did she use membership numbers (a small number) to show how few gang members there are and then gangs and associates (a large number) to show a) how many were in prison and b) that they dominate certain crimes and c) why use arrest data and not conviction data – surely what can be proved rather than alleged is the key?

You continually say that the numbers ‘seem credible’ but that’s not enough, is it? Colin Craig thinks that it’s credible that we didn’t land on the moon. What we want is the truth.

I don’t expect you to eat a suitcase full of carrots when you discover I am right, although I promise I will certainly send you one. I would, however, like you to be honest. I believe that you are, and therefore I await your response.

I know I am safe on the prison numbers. They have without doubt been misrepresented. It is now just a matter of how much of the other information has been too.


5 Comments
Mick Smith
8/8/2014 04:43:42 am

Very true Jarrod.
The Matrix used to establish numbers of individuals as 'associates' is a variable that cannot be taken seriously. I do not believe that is important to the minister in any case. What the presentation of these 'factual statistics' is designed to do is to do is to embellish the the extent of criminal activity supposedly controlled by gangs (gangs being a collective term rather like saying Koreans, Japanese and Chinese are all Asian!) to hype up the publics perception that all gangs, members and associates are inherently bad.
There is good reason for this particularly in an election year. The gangs are very visually conspicuous, there are connections although many loosely applied to gangs and drugs. The percentage of involvement doesn't matter to the public they merely want the scourge eliminated. By publicly denouncing gangs and their involvement allows harassment and persecution of for the most part, a law abiding minuscule percentage of the population that were it not for their regalia and insignias would blend into the mix. That said it is this appearance that makes them fair game and the authorities such as the Police make every effort to be as public as they can when interacting with these groups. The result? a public that sees the police are doing their job with these criminals who lets be honest are fair game. But like Ducks in a barrel they do not retaliate to these accusations with any audible voice. The "real" criminals of the drug world are faceless calculating business men and much harder to apprehend much easier to chase those who's represent what has already been established as undesirable.
You are right in your comments and I did chuckle. If these gang members are so flush with funds why do so many toil at menial jobs and have little by way of possessions?
It is a pity that the public would rather be ignorant of facts than look at what gangs are really about. They provide a family for these individuals that they respect, honour and defend. If you ask 10 people in the street have they met a gang member, spoken to a gang member or had any connection to a gang member 8 or 9 would say no. But ask the same question as to whether they think they are criminals the statistics would likely reverse.

Reply
Ben Moore
8/8/2014 09:35:17 am

Hi Jarrod,

I posted the below to the JustSpeak facebook page, I have also put an OIA in requesting the Police's stats, both what was provided to the minster, and their gang numbers in general.

Two issues with this (Farrar's fist defence of the figures); the first is with the numerator not the denominator. Gangs are incredibly opaque, and Police recording of gang affiliations (I assume the data used) is very inexact. I would bet (not a suitcase of carrots though), that this figure includes a lot of gang affiliates, ex gang members, and young wanabees.

Secondly this muddles causation, in the violent crime stats at least. Certainly gang members are going to be more prone to violence, but a lot of this is going to be coming from their socio-economic background, which is ex-ante their gang membership.

I would be interested to see some other crime stats for these 4000 ‘gang members’. You could use something like domestic violence or drink driving which are flatter across social status and not particularly ‘organised’, to get a sense of how much of this is actually gang-related, and how much of it the set of gang members overlapping the set of people from incredibly rough backgrounds.

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Leonardo
8/8/2014 03:00:43 pm

Hahahahaha "the Matrix".

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Jack
9/8/2014 02:12:25 am

Hi Jared love you're work.

I myself and other long time friends have seriously supported MCs in the past (10 + years ago for 10+ years) shoulder to shoulder,Whe i get "randomly" stopped by the law when the run my name it comes back as gang associate ,now I'm not complaining as you reap what you sow but I have no active club contacts and wonder the accuracy of these statistics when my charges will also go into the "Gang" statistics I am not aone in this and wonder how many of the 4000 get tainted for my now Joe Citizen convictions

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2/9/2022 01:39:01 pm

This iis a great post thanks

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