Dairy owners say it's taken injuries, pain and trauma for the Government finally to listen, but it could be too little too late with crime "out of control", according to a business advocate.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on Monday a new "aggravating factor" for those who are found to be using, or rewarding youth to commit a crime. The Government is also cracking down on people who decide to film and post their criminal behaviour on social media while also beefing up police prosecution resources with funding for 78 more prosecutors.
Dairy and Business Owners Group Chair Sunny Kaushal told Newshub Late on Monday evening it's good the Labour Government is finally taking note of crime, but he believes these measures should've been introduced years ago.
"It has been six years that we have been campaigning and asking and crying out every day for the Government to do something and now it is completely out of control," Kaushal said.
"It's too late to do a U-turn. It's been six years… it has taken one death and so many injuries, pain and trauma for the Government to listen."
The Government's announcement comes after Christchurch police were busy on Monday morning responding to seven burglaries - three of them ram raids - in just over three hours.
Sukjinder Singh's dairy was one of those targeted, with security footage showing a car slowly reversing before flooring it into the door. The footage then shows the offenders letting the car roll away while they raid the store.
Singh told Newshub he is sick of it.
"There's too much going on… Enough. It's happening every day. Even in daylight," Singh said.
Kaushal is also fed-up saying even more needs to be done to tackle "out of control" crime.
"We need to take those youth offenders into custodial state care and we need to make the parents deeply responsible," he told Newshub Late.
"We cannot tolerate this, we cannot allow the criminals to prey on our communities and businesses."
Doubts if the Government can execute its plan
Doubts have emerged around part of the Government's crime crackdown, with experts worried about their ability to execute one of their plans.
Part of the Government's announcement will see posting offending behaviour on social media becoming an aggravating factor in sentencing.
Gorilla Technology CEO Paul Spain told AM on Tuesday he agreed criminals who share footage of their crimes online, like ram raids and aggravated robberies, could encourage people to do it, especially if they're getting away with it.
But Spain isn't convinced adding it as an aggravating factor will deter criminals.
"If you're going to do a ram raid, are you really thinking you're going to get caught and looking at what seems to me a minor thing, the aggravating factor aspect?
"If you were worried about it, could you easily get around it? Are you going to carry the phone yourself or is somebody else going to carry it? If they're not directly part of the offending, I think it will be actually quite hard to implement in practice," he told AM.
Spain also believes it'll be hard to monitor who actually took the footage.
"How do you tie that back? 'Oh, yes, I took the footage, but I wasn't going to share it, but somebody stole my phone and they uploaded it'. There are all these little factors in there that could get people off," he said.
Watch the full interview with Sunny Kaushal and Paul Spain in the video above.
