Kerre Woodham: The real purpose of the ban on gang patches in the home

As much as I hate the gangs profiting from misery and tying up police time with their internecine feuds, the late amendment to the gangs bill, banning people from wearing their gang patches in their own homes, seems ludicrous for the reasons that have been given.  

The Gangs Bill, as it was tabled in July at the Justice Select Committee, will give police the power to disperse gatherings and to ban patches in public. All good. But a clause added a few weeks ago allows the police to apply to the courts for a gang prohibition order for repeat offenders, meaning anyone convicted of wearing their patch in public three times in five years won't be allowed to wear the patch in their own home. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told Mike Hosking this morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast that he makes no apologies for giving police extra tools to deal with gang members. 

“What it's about is giving them, the police, that option to deal with what we think will be a small group of people who say, well, stuff you, I'm just gonna wear my patch and I'll pay my fine and I'll keep on doing it. And that would undermine the purpose of the bill and that's why we got that feedback during the Select Committee and so we're bringing in this extra tool to give the police extra powers to deal with that small number of repeat offenders.” 

Well, all very well and good, but there's a couple of things here. This amendment really should have been discussed at Select Committee so that organisations, experts, and the public could have their say. You can't just discuss a bill at Select Committee, everybody knows what's in it, everybody has their say, and then after it's been tabled go - oh, hang on, hang on. I've got an idea. You can't have a thought bubble and pop it in (although it appears you can). But I think it sets a precedent that other substantial changes and amendments can be made to bills without the public getting to have their say.  

An open letter from the Law Society to Goldsmith urged him to withdraw the amendment, calling it an unjustified limitation on the right to freedom of expression and not rationally connected to the stated purpose of the gang patch ban, which is to reduce public intimidation. And it is. I don't like seeing them on the streets, we share the streets, I'm very unlikely to visit a gang member's home and if they want to wear their patch at home and they're not doing anything unlawful, then I find it hard to see how that is going to impact anybody around us.  

Then there's the policing of the ban. Making rules that are unenforceable weakens the impact of legislation and laws. Are the police really going to go around peering in the windows of gang members, hauling them into cells if they spot them wearing their patch while sitting on the couch watching The Chase? They're not. And I think this is where Paul Goldsmith should have just come clean. Surely the purpose of the law is to give the police licence to niggle. How could any recidivist patch wearer relax in the comfort of their own home, dealing their drugs or polishing their firearms or whatever it is that they do, if they know that at any time of the day or night the police can turn up? Oy, oy, oy, understand that you're a recidivist patch wearer, just checking you're not wearing your patch, Sir. Ostensibly, it would be to check that the patch is still in the wardrobe in its dry-cleaning bag, waiting for the no patch order to be served, but really, it's so that the police can just turn up and make the gang members life misery.  

And that's fine, because if you're going to keep wearing your patch, then it's probably pretty likely that you're going to ignore other laws as well, but I don't know why they didn't just come clean on that. It's the Operation Raptor approach that the Australian police used, niggle, niggle, niggle. Every time one of the Aussie gang members went out in public what they were wearing, what they were driving, what they were riding, was just put through the ringer. And it was just constant niggle. And if that's what it's for, fine, I still think it should have been put through at the right time. You can't have a thought bubble and pop it into your Bill. If they forgot, then it should go through the process and do it properly.  

But to say we're giving the police powers to stop recidivist gang members from wearing patches in their own home, to me sounds silly. If you say we're giving the police powers to niggle the living daylights out of recidivist gang members, fine with that. 

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