Crime rate drops in the Cooks

Society

Crime rate drops in the Cooks ‘It is not the Cook Islands’ way to over-react when in a personal crisis’

By Florence Syme-Buchanan

former public servants didn’t want to blacken their name by getting into trouble, they wanted to get another job.”

She says the Probation Service was more objective in its forcast, “but we had to leam too,” as the problems of 1995 mass public service sackings and the eco nomic crisis - were firsts for the Cooks.

Tuara says it is not the Cook Islands’ way to over-react when in a personal crisis.

“We have this way of picking ourselves up and getting on with it.” She says also the huge migration overseas may have “prevented any major problems that may have occurred during this period.” Local newspapers have reported that up to 4000 people have left the country in the last two years.

This has reduced the Cook Islands pop ulation from 22,400 in December 1995 to 18,000 last year. Statistics also show that alcohol related offending is decreasing

New Zealand consultants were wrong when they said there would be more crime in the Cook Islands during the height of country’s economic depression and public ser vice layoffs.

Consultants working with the Ministry of Finance anticipated a wide range of social problems would happen with so many people out of work. Instead, the Cook Islands crime rate has dropped in the last six years with the lowest number recorded in the last three years - the most problematic the country has had in terms of its economy. Chief Probation Officer Angeline Tuara says the consultants would have been making forecasts from experi ence in their own countries.

“But it didn't happen for us that way,

yearly.

In 1995 there were 61 alcohol related offences, dropping to 50 in 1995 and 28 last year.

According to figures released by the New Zealand Public Health Department, Cook Islanders are the South Pacific’s biggest drinkers. The average Cook Islander consumes 8.7 litres of alcohol a year, compared to 1.3 litres in Fiji and 1.4 litres in Samoa.

Although men are committing less crimes in recent years, they offend far more than women in the Cooks.

The number of females offending has steadily dropped from 31 in 1991 to just five last year. By comparison, 138 men offended in 1991, a figure that decreased in 1997 to 116.

More long term unemployed people have appeared in court in the last two years that those with jobs. ■

The cultural make-up of the Cooks has helped prevent some of the problems that could have occurred with redundancies.