Back in April, the results of the 2008 Quality of Life survey were released. They showed that Christchurch was New Zealand’s safest city, with less than 100 crimes per 100,000 people. They survey also showed that, despite those facts, 64.5 per cent of Christchurch residents felt unsafe in the central city. More than any other urban centre in the country and significantly higher than the national average of 47 per cent. A recent Avenues magazine article pointed out that compared with New Zealand’s eleven other police districts on a per capita basis, Canterbury ranked lowest in the rates of disorder, drug offences, and serious or grievous assaults. It was also low in the pack for robbery (eighth), burglary (eighth) and sexual attack (ninth).

Why then, are the people of Christchurch so afraid? No doubt media sensationalism plays a role, fear sells newspapers and boosts TV ratings, so crime is almost always in the news. Today’s issue of the Sunday Star Times invited readers with the headline “Why is Christchurch So Violent” atop the front page. The article, a few pages in carried a different headline and unexpectedly provided some useful information as to why there might be a high perception of crime, and what differentiates Christchurch’s crimes from that of other parts of the country.

Criminologist Greg Newbald told the paper “There’s a big nutcase factor down here,” and bizarre killings -few they may be- attract news reporters. Newbald described the city’s criminal underclass as being made up of “a rabble of junkies and small-time petty crims” rather than the organised gangs of other centres. The roots of this situation lie in Christchurch’s social history. Since its inception as a planned settlement for gentlemen farmers, the city has had a stratified, class-segregated society, with less social mobility than other parts of the country, helping to entrench the city’s “lumpen proletariat”. Gang researcher Jarrod Gilbert said it was likely that Christchurch’s social ills might be more visible because those affected were white, and more centrally located in the city. This contrats with Auckland, where much of the Polynesian working class was largely based out of sight of the rest of the city, in South Auckland.