NZ Gangs Brace for Tattoo Ban: Cover With Makeup or Face Arrest

Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images

New Zealand’s gangsters will need to apply foundation when they wake up in the morning to hide their tattoos or face arrest if the incoming government’s strategy to quash gang activity goes ahead.

The National Party’s police spokesperson, Mark Mitchell, expected to be the next police minister, emphasised the need for practical measures to address gang tensions and violence in the country.

“We know that there’s gang tensions in Ōpōtiki. We know that there was a gang-related homicide there a couple of months ago and the Mongrel Mob turned up and took the town under siege,” Mr. Mitchell told the national broadcaster RNZ.

Mongrel Mob is New Zealand’s largest gang.

“The police need to have proactive tools that they can get out there and they can stop and turn over gang members, and search them and search their vehicles and take firearms—not wait for a 20-year-old female to be shot in a drive-by shooting or for someone’s home to be shot up by gangs and drive-by shootings,” he said.

If the party’s proposed ban on gang patches, such as large insignia sewn onto jackets, doesn’t work, Mr. Mitchell said new legislation may be passed to ban facial tattoos.

“So if the gangs think that they’re going to get around a ban on gang patches by having swastikas and offensive tattoos on their faces, then we'll take action to curb that,” he said.

The centre-right New Zealand National Party, which recently swept the Labour Party out of power, also wants to extend police powers to allow them to search suspected gang members, their vehicles, and properties without warrants.

They would also ban gang activity on social media and stop gang members from talking to each other.

‘None Has Stemmed the Tide’

Legal experts have noted that dealing with gang activity in New Zealand has become highly politicised.

“Government ministers are under constant media scrutiny and political pressure, with both sides trying to look more staunch on crime than the other,” law professors Alexander Gillespie and Claire Breen from the University of Waikato said.

Despite the plethora of legislation and criminal law that is constantly evolving, including those governing fortified houses and the prohibition of gang patches, none has stemmed the tide, the professors say.

Gang membership reached about 2,300 by 1980. It took nearly 35 years to reach just under 4,000 in 2014, but only seven years before the numbers doubled again to 8,061 in 2021.

“We’ve had the most crime, especially the most gun crime, that I can ever remember,” former federal Member of Parliament Matt King earlier told The Epoch Times.

Mr. King noted that while trying to solve intergenerational problems could be “very labour intensive and very capital intensive,” in the long run it was worthwhile.

In one instance, New Zealand taxpayers were estimated to be paying $120,000 (US$75,000) annually to look after a prisoner. But Mr. King said authorities could have “just spent $20,000 on him when he was eight, nine, or 10 to get him out of his abusive, alcoholic father’s grasp.”

But he conceded that the government was not incentivised to tackle the issue through targeted intervention at extremely young ages because of the country’s three-year election cycle.

“Because it’s a long-term benefit. The payout, the benefit will only be felt 10 years from now and there’s probably going to be a change of government by then,” he said.

A Bipartisan Approach

Addressing the problem of organised crime requires a shift away from treating it as a political game and should be a cross-party effort due to its long-term nature, Mr. Gillespie and Ms. Breen said.

“There would need to be an agreed system of political accountability set against known and transparent targets and indicators,” they said.

Recognising that gangs won’t vanish, efforts should be made to find areas of cooperation on legal projects and help individuals safely leave criminal organisations.

“Perhaps the most critical aim of all will be to slow gang recruitment. Of course, that is a fundamental challenge well beyond any single policy or program—to create an inclusive society where the pathways, opportunities, and benefits of being a lawful citizen outweigh the alternative,” they added.