Plural policing contemporary New Zealand: insights into state power, actors and relational dynamics

ABSTRACT

New Zealand has a very plural policing landscape, though little is known about many of its facets. This article provides initial answers to three crucial questions: Who plays a policing role in contemporary New Zealand, how is state power exercised, and what shapes state-society-policing relations? The findings show that neoliberalism has strongly affected state-society-policing relations, and several actors across the state and society divide partake in police-centred partnerships. It also finds that state-society-policing relations reflect ideological, political and socioeconomic divisions inherent in contemporary New Zealand but arching back to its founding days. This emerges through analysing how the two main community-led policing initiatives, the Community Patrols New Zealand and the Māori wardens, relate to the police and the state. The findings matter beyond New Zealand and academia. They reiterate that plural policing is one of the primary expressions of how power is exercised in society, and it affects issues related to state legitimacy and social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Plural policing
• New Zealand
• New Zealand police
• Māori wardens
• Community patrols New Zealand

Introduction

It is well established that policing is plural. Actors across the state and society divide relate to, oppose, and enrol each other to maintain social order through a range of preventive, reactive, penal, investigatory, and other overt and covert measures. Since the 1990s, a multidisciplinary literature has explained aspects of the plural policing phenomenon. This literature has built partly on two theoretical strands.

The first strand borrows from the governance theories that emerged to explain how replacing the traditional hierarchical social structure with horizontal networks from the 1970s changed state power (Castells 1996). As political scientists argued that neoliberal ‘hollowing of the state’ meant that states were now ‘steering rather than rowing’ or ‘governing at a distance’ (Osborne and Gaebler 1993; Rhodes 1994; Rose and Miller 1992), social and legal scholars reflected on how these changes affected policing, then primarily understood through Weberian lenses. The neoliberal plural policing approaches that emerged maintain a normatively state-centred view of plural policing. They argue that the state, often through the police, should use regulatory powers to enrol other actors into networks and hybrid alliances and steer them and perform policing at a distance. These positions are evident in approaches such as ‘third-party policing’, ‘partnership policing’, ‘police extended family’, ‘anchored pluralism’ and the ‘policing web’ (Brodeur 2010; Cherney and Hong Chui 2010; Johnston 2003; Loader and Walker 2007; Mazerolle and Ransley 2005). These approaches also benefited from the internalisation of the neoliberal logic that citizens have some responsibility in preventing social harm, or what Rose (2000, 337) calls ‘the problem of control in a “free society”.’ In policing, this has favoured the shift of some of the onus of providing security from the state onto communities and citizens through what Garland (2002) terms responsibilisation. In practice, responsibilisation manifests through ‘preventative partnerships’ where government, non-state actors and organisations share social control functions.

The second strand borrows from a Foucauldian view of power, which argues that state regulatory reach is one of the means to exercise power, and possibly not the main one. Foucauldians believe structural changes brought about by modernity and neoliberalism mean states are now embedded in networks of governance where power is diffuse, often coming from below (Foucault 1991). The nodal governance school, the most influential Foucauldian approach, explains the governance of plural policing from a society-centred perspective, with the state and the police seen as one node among others (Berg and Clifford 2015; Dupont 2004; Johnston and Shearing 2003; Shearing 2005; Wood and Shearing 2007). Other Foucauldian approaches focus on ‘networks’ and ‘assemblages’ to explain the coming together of different policing actors (Diphoorn and Grassiani 2019; Dupont 2004).

I have comprehensively reviewed these two literature strands elsewhere (Scarpello 2015, 2016a, 2016b). Here it is important to underline that they provide different lenses to understand how state power is exercised in policing and by whom, and how policing actors relate to the state. These questions matter beyond academic endeavours because they intersect with issues of state legitimacy and social justice. These questions underpin the rationale for this article, which focuses on New Zealand’s contemporary plural policing landscape and includes two other sections.

The first section has two aims. It briefly traces changes in state-society-policing relations in New Zealand since the 1980s and introduces a broad-pattern view of the main categories of actors policing the country. It finds that New Zealand’s policing landscape presents elements of state-centred neoliberal modes of governance (responsibilisation, steering and policing at a distance) with the New Zealand Police (NZP) maintaining a central role in the many partnerships that have emerged. The second section delves into the relational element shaping partnerships between the state, the NZP and two Community-Led Policing Initiatives (CLPIs): the Community Patrol New Zealand (CPNZ) and the Māori wardens. Māori are the first settlers of the country. Both CLPIs represent examples of communities’ taking policing responsibility. They also perform policing functions as directed by the NZP and on their behalf. Nevertheless, they relate to the state/NZP very differently. The first sees itself as an auxiliary of the NZP and is willing to perform as much policing as requested, whereas the latter reluctantly performs minimum policing functions. This section explains that these dissimilar sets of relations are rooted in different demographic and historical trajectories of the two CLPIS that manifest with different views on the legitimacy of the state-framed plural policing landscape.

This article adds to the New Zealand plural policing literature in two ways. It offers the most comprehensive, broad-pattern view of who is involved in policing contemporary New Zealand. It also contributes to understanding the relational dynamics between the state and non-state policing actors (NSPAs). These findings also enrich the plural policing literature beyond New Zealand and provide elements for comparative studies. The main plural policing comparative studies have not included New Zealand (Diphoorn and Grassiani 2019, Hirschmann 2022; Jones and Newburn 2006; Terpstra, van Stokkom, and Spreeuwers 2013).

Methodologically, this article pairs a critical examination of the literature and analysis of government data with 18, 40-to-80-minute-long semi-structured interviews with NSPAs and 28 replies to an anonymous questionnaire sent to every CPNZ coordinator. Both the interviewees and the respondents provided statistical information and discussed how they viewed their role within the policing landscape, what formal and informal mechanisms and practices were in place for them to relate and collaborate with the NZP and other NSPAs, and what hurdles existed to such relations. Patrollers also explained how they set their patrolling priorities.¹ Finally, 65 out of the 67 city and district councils, collectively referred to as territorial authorities (TA), responded to requests under the Local Government Official Information and Meeting Act 1987 and provided details of their policing-related functions.

New Zealand’s contemporary plural policing landscape and state power

In this section I first explain how the ‘neoliberal turn’ the country experienced in the mid-1980s altered state-society-policing relations. My focus is on the NZP. I then provide a broad-pattern analysis of the categories of actors policing New Zealand.

As the fruit of a settler community, the NZP has a history of centralised and militaristic policing (Dunstall 1999; Hill 1986, 1995). While these tendencies have not fully disappeared (Stanley and Bradley 2020b), in the last decades, the institution has markedly veered toward a policing by consent approach, and no longer strived to centralise policing. The ‘neoliberal turn’ the country experienced in the mid-1980s influenced these changes. This turn has been thoroughly investigated (Bray and Walsh 1998; Kelsey 2015a, 2015b; Larner 1997). Here it is essential to underline that the political, economic and societal changes experienced during that time translated into pressure for change within the NZP.

Indeed, as the public required more accountable use of public funds and better and more focused services, and the political establishment demanded ‘the public sector to do more with less’ and for ‘government programmes to be effective’ (den Heyer 2015, 532), the NZP initiated deep managerial and operational transformations aiming to rationalise cost while delivering more effective services. This transformation took place through three particularly influential programmes: Policing 2000, Policing Excellence and Prevention First. Taken together, these embedded neoliberal logic and modes of governance and reshaped state-society-policing relations.

Policing 2000 (1996–2007) provided the initial framework to streamline processes, reduce paperwork and administration and deliver services via technology. It also called to return staff resources to the street, adopt a strong customer focus and develop people skills and expertise to improve police performance (den Heyer 2015, 536). The impact of the 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis on public sector funding and budgets, and the increases in demand across police and the justice sector, represented the ‘business drivers’ for introducing Policing Excellence in 2009 (New Zealand Police 2014, 9). This programme continued to streamline organisational processes in crime prevention and victim-focused activities to deploy officers more efficiently (New Zealand Police 2014). It also provided the platform for Prevention First, which evolved into a strategy and a transformation programme (den Heyer 2023). Introduced in 2011, Prevention First remains at the core of the NZP approach to policing. It is premised on the notion of crime prevention through community policing and calls to NZP to establish ‘meaningful partnerships with others in the community’ and to ‘make full use of opportunities to enlist the support of our partner agencies … ’ (New Zealand Police 2017, 5; den; Heyer 2023, 337). In essence, Prevention First embodies elements of neoliberal approaches to policing that shift some policing responsibilities onto communities and citizens with the NZP enrolling and steering others and performing some policing at a distance. Notably, the NZP, both at the national and local levels, see themselves as the initiator and the leader in these policing arrangements (see also den Heyer 2023, 336). Although policing has always been plural in New Zealand (like elsewhere), the new set of state-society policing relations deepened, broadened and normalised the plurality of policing actors. The policing landscape that has emerged, however, maintains strong state-centred connotations in how power is exercised.

Plural policing New Zealand

Article 10 of the Policing Act 2008 (p.11) normalises plural policing in New Zealand as it acknowledges the roles of public agencies or bodies other than the NZP, Māori wardens, the private security industry and individual citizens. It is thus reasonable to argue that, beyond the NZP, there are three broad categories of policing actors (1) public agencies and bodies, (2) the private security industry (PSI), and (3) the CLPIs. The following introduction of each includes examples of policing arrangements that straddle categories and discloses the ongoing centrality of the NZP.²

The policing role of local governments and public agencies has grown exponentially and in different directions. For example, New Zealand’s 67 TAs have taken on considerable security responsibility since the Local Government Act 2002 required them to develop long-term plans focusing on well-being. TAs, whether at city or district level, see community safety as a primary prerequisite towards achieving community well-being, a requirement maintained in the 2018 amendment of the Act (Coggan and Gabites 2007). Answers to official requests disclose the ubiquities of CCTV cameras in community centres, civic offices, galleries, libraries, recreation centres and parks. The Chatham Island District Council is the only exception to this trend, though it is currently considering installing some. CCTVs are either operated directly by council staff or, more often, subcontracted to private security firms. The NZP have access to all CCTV cameras through a range of contextual arrangements with TAs. Most TAs also contract private security for several bylaw enforcement activities, such as patrolling, static guarding, and noise and animal control. In large urban centres, TAs have dedicated teams providing a visible deterrent to nuisances by patrolling specific areas. Wellington’s Local Hosts, Rotorua’s Safe City Guardians and Hutt Valley’s Safe City Ambassadors are examples of such teams. These teams are often embedded in broader programmes with public and private agencies, to support the well-being of residents, visitors, businesses and workers. One recent example is Wellington’s The Pōneke Promise, launched in May 2021. The programme involves ten different agencies and actors, including the regional council, the NZP, Wellington City Mission, Taranaki Whānui (a collective of local iwi), Victoria University of Wellington and Wellington’s Local Hosts.³ Similarly, since 2012, the Auckland Central City Community Safety Taskforce brings together local and central government representatives, NGOs, educational and academic institutions, businesses and industry representatives, residents, private security guards, CLIs and the NZP.⁴ Every TA’s policing function is coordinated with the NZP.

Government departments and agencies have increased their policing role as part of inter-agency collaborative efforts to prevent, contain and respond to crimes such as terrorism, domestic violence, gangs and youth crime. Though the first collaborations arch to the 1980s, these plural policing assemblages have deepened since the turn of the century. For example, eight public agencies and several private actors collaborate in preventing, containing and responding to child, youth and family crime. The bedrock of this assemblage is the legislative principles found in section 208 of the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act 1989 (CYPF Act). The principles emphasise diversion, decarceration, acknowledgement of victims’ interests and needs and encourage family and community input (Lynch 2012). The involvement of families and communities recognises that these actors can contribute to the design, development, and delivery of solutions to address youth crime because of their lived experiences. This recognition extends the policing assemblage beyond the state. The 2015 Youth Crime Action Plan, the latest policy iteration based on such principles, includes Māori wardens (Davis 2014; Lynch 2021).⁵ The NZP are responsible for deciding how to handle a child or young person apprehended. They may warn the offender, refer them to Police Youth Aid, or, where certain conditions dictate it, arrest them. If they refer the child to Youth Aid, an additional set of options opens up, including a warning, an alternative action (such as reparation, an apology to the victim, or low-level interventions, such as mentoring and short-term community work), or referral to family group conference (Ministry of Justice 2013, 21–30; New Zealand Police 2012).

The PSI is the second main category of actor involved in policing New Zealand. Bradley (2017, 499–500) explains that the industry grew exponentially from the 1980s due to two dynamics that were somewhat affected by the entrenchment of neoliberalism. At one level, the NZP rationalised its use of resources. They progressively focused on violent crime and withdrew from securing valuables transport, guarding commercial premises and alarm response. Concurrently, the NZP invited citizens to take on some responsibilities for their security. The PSI thus grew organically to fill the gap. In 1976, there were 1,925 licenced security guards (Bradley 2017, 499), while in 2021, the Zealand Security Association (NZSA) claimed that there were 30,000 licenced personals.⁶ While this latter figure may not be fully accurate and includes personnel licenced but inactive, or licenced to perform duties either than guarding, it is still indicative of a progressive growth of the industry. The value of the PSI was estimated at NZ$2.8 billion in 2021, according to the NZSA. Roughly 55% of it comes from installing and maintaining alarms and other access electronic devices, while a further 35% comes from guarding services. The balance is from private investigators, locksmiths, cash transfers and consultants.⁷ The PSI’s core customer base remains the private sector, but as noted above, the PSI is integral to TA-led policing arrangements. It also contributes to private-led initiatives that have social or economic objectives but include a security element. One example is the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) model, emerged in the United States and Canada in the 1970s and implemented in New Zealand since the 1980s. BIDs are self-taxing schemes financing additional services to promote the attractiveness of a district and enhance its commercial and business activities. Every major New Zealand urban centre has BIDS. In 2022, Auckland had over 50.⁸ Crime prevention initiatives, delivered through private security, are invariably among the extra services provided. Indeed, ‘improved personal safety in the town centre’ is one of the measurable indicators for BIDS’ success (Auckland Council 2016, 30).

CLPIs are the last main category of actors policing New Zealand. It includes CPNZ, Neighbourhood Support New Zealand (NSNZ), Māori wardens, and Pacific Wardens. I engage with CPNZ and Māori wardens in the next section. Below, I briefly introduce the NSNZ and the Pacifika wardens.

NSNZ’s roots are in the anti-crime Neighbourhood Support Group established by residents in St Mary’s Bay, Auckland, after a woman was brutally attacked at her house in 1983 (McNaughton and Annabelle 1986). This first ‘neighbourhood watch’ triggered a nationwide movement that was first resisted, but eventually embraced by the NZP from 1985 (Dance 1986, 208). NSNZ has since developed into a nationwide community-led movement to strengthen communities’ cohesiveness and resilience (see also Brown 2022). In 2000 it became an independent, registered charity incorporating 71 community organisations, including six territorial authorities run by local councils.⁹ NSNZ is particularly strong in the North Island of New Zealand and has an excellent network in South Auckland, where Pacific people represent a strong demographic.¹⁰ The organisation’s main aim is to connect communities, making them more resilient in dealing with adversities of various kinds, including crime. It reaches at least 200 thousand homes and stretches from the national board down to the local communities through groups that comprise anywhere from a handful of houses to dozens of residential households in a suburb. These groups meet regularly to discuss local priorities and problem-solving strategies coordinated by one of the Neighbourhood Support member organisations, whose coordinator is often housed in the local police station. Some ‘preventing policing’ occurs at this level as proximity allows the NZP to gain intelligence and access local knowledge. Since July 2020, the NZP also send weekly reports on local crime and police priorities.¹¹ The report is a mechanism to steer NSNZ groups to produce intelligence that supports police priorities.

Pacifika wardens are volunteers operating in areas where most of the Pacific Islanders (known collectively as Pasifika) live. As of the 2018 census, Pacifika represents 9% of New Zealand’s 4,9 million people. It is not clear how many Pacifika wardens operate nationwide. A media-based, rough estimate indicates that at least 300 may be active, about 120 within the Tamaki Makaurau Pacific Wardens Trust (OurAuckland 2019). This Trust was formalised in 2019 with the support of the NZP and has brought together eight Pacifika patrols operating in South and West Auckland since the 2000s. Other Pacifika patrols operate in urban centres where Pacific people immigrated in the 1950s to answer New Zealand’s workforce shortage in the manufacturing sector. Pacifika wardens work with NZP to reduce alcohol consumption in schools, parks and public areas, and street disorder and violence in city centres (New Zealand Police 2010, 10). Most are male, originally hailing from Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands, Solomon Island, Niue and Tokelau and associated with various Christian churches.

To surmise, neoliberalism contributed to changes in state-society-policing relations and the normalisation of state-centred modes of policing governance that shifted some responsibilities for policing downwards and allowed the NZP to enrol and steer other actors and perform some policing from a distance. The plural policing landscape includes actors across the public and private and state and society divide. Their functions and practice vary, but most are engaged in ‘preventing policing’ and eschew coercive force. Coercive force remains the remit of the NZP, although door and private security officers do resort to some occasionally. The analysis confirms that policing actors, including the NZP, are often embedded in assemblages with agencies and institutions that have social and economic functions, as typified by the TA-led programmes, the child and youth programme and BIDS.

State-society-policing relations: the case of the CPNZ and Māori wardens

This section delves into the relations shaping partnerships between the NZP and the two main CLPIs: the CPNZ and the Māori wardens. Both are expressions of communities that have taken on some responsibility for policing functions and perform some policing on behalf of the state. However, they relate to the state and the NZP very differently due to normative, cultural, political and historical reasons.

The enthusiastic CPNZ

The CPNZ enthusiastically operates within the state-framed policing landscape and is eager to perform as much policing function as possible. The set of relations binding the CPNZ to the NPZ (and the state) is based on a shared political-ideological project.

The CPNZ is an umbrella organisation established in 2001 to support, train and guide the then-30 affiliated patrols. It now includes over 5,000 volunteers in 175 patrols (CPNZ 2021). The regulatory framework through which the NZP and the CPNZ collaborate is the MoU they first ratified in 2002 and last updated in 2019. The MoU calls the NZP to vet all prospective patrollers and train those enrolled. The primary funder of the CPNZ is the Ministry of Justice through the NZP. Community patrols also raise their annual operating expenses through local grants, sponsorship and donations.¹² The MoU calls on patrollers to sign a declaration of confidentiality and abide by an NZP-approved code of conduct. The funding and the MoU thus allocate the NZP a high degree of control and ownership over the CPNZ.

The MOU also details multi-layered lines of collaboration allowing the NZP great latitude in steering the CPNZ. For example, it directs the National Manager Prevention at Police National Headquarters and the National Office of CPNZ to coordinate on national issues, operational matters and policy. It calls for the Commissioner of Police nominated representatives to meet with the CPNZ leadership quarterly to discuss priorities and plans for the present and the following financial year. Proximity facilitates coordination because two senior CPNZ members have an office in the Crime Prevention team at the National Police headquarters in Wellington and Auckland Central Police Station (CPNZ 2015). The MoU also stipulates coordination at the district and area levels. It calls district commanders to appoint a Community Patrol Police Liaison Officer (PLO) to each CPNZ patrol and calls PLOs to have regular meetings and share information with the patrols. The NZP also provide CPNZ with patrolling priorities at the local level. Patrollers commit to at least one 4-hour patrolling duty weekly, with the highest hours clocked in urban areas. Collectively patrollers clocked 114,507 patrolling hours and 12,569 hours reviewing CCTV footage on behalf of the NZP in 2021.¹³ During patrols, CPNZ members are logged on to the police central communication centre, can call in to report crime in real time or note non-urgent crimes, such as tagging, for police to follow up later.¹⁴ Besides patrolling, CPNZ patrols assist with emergency response, traffic management, event security, and crime scene management. Overall, though the MoU is not implemented fully – as it also transpires from some of the comments from the questionnaire – it provides a framework to extend the NZP’s reach through its ability to steer and police through CPNZ units. That said, the partnership’s success owes most to the two institutions’ shared vision of New Zealand.

The NZP were historically sceptic of the role of community patrols and actively tried to shut down such initiatives. They changed approach as budget constraints and increasing focus on community policing turned the patrols into an opportunity in the early 2000s. The NZP eventually supported the institutionalisation of the CPNZ and now sees the CPNZ as its eyes and ears on the ground (Bradley 2017, 503). NZP Commissioner Andrew Coster said in 2021 that ‘the objectives and visions of the two organisations are closely aligned’ and CPNZ ‘slots right into our operating model of Prevention First … ’ (CPNZ YouTube Channel 2021. Emphasis added). The CPNZ shares this view. Already in 2014, CPNZ Chair Robert Fowler said the CPNZ is now ‘regarded by Police nationwide as a deployable resource available to them to carry out appropriate tasks’ (CPNZ 2014). Current CPNZ Chair, Chris Lawton went one step further. He argues that “CPNZ is ‘essentially an auxiliary of the NZP’.¹⁵ Respondents to the questionnaire also unanimously said they see their patrols as an extension of the NZP and wished for more enrolling rather than less.

Voluntarism is a very diffused practice in New Zealand, with over 50% of the population volunteering with an organisation or directly in their communities. About 90% of those volunteering say they do it to give back to the community (Volunteering New Zealand 2022, 1 and 10). There are thus positive connotations to volunteering. Most CPNZ volunteers share this altruistic aim, which this study does not wish to obscure. However, it is essential to also explain CPNZ-NZP relations within New Zealand’s historical, sociopolitical and economic context.

The CPNZ is rooted in the penchant for vigilantism among white settlers, or Pākehās, that arrived from the late 18th century as the islands were brought into the orbit of global capitalism by American and Australian-based sealing and whaling operations (Brooking 2004, 27–28). Hill’s trilogy (Hill 1986, 1989, 1995) chronicled the policing of colonial New Zealand that included vigilantes and privately raised militia to support Pākehās’ land grab of Māori land and the imposition of a white, capitalist social order. The progressive strengthening of the New Zealand state from the early 20^th century, and the growing stature of the police, limited the role of vigilantes (Bassett 2013). The police, for example, last enrolled volunteers in coercive policing operations in 1932, when they deployed them to quell protests in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland as workers rioted demanding government support during the Great Depression (Dunstall 1999, 86–96). Vigilantes never really disappeared, though. They remained active in support of rural, one-person station constabulary officers and eventually re-emerged in cities in the 1980s, as urbanisation increased problems with community cohesion and crime (Bradley 2017). Urban community patrols have since taken ethnic connotations, reflecting local demographic.

CPNZ has mainly developed as an expression of regulated vigilantism in Pākehās areas.¹⁶ According to the sample surveyed, retired New Zealanders of European descent represent at least 70% of patrollers. CPNZ does not include ethnicity information when recruiting, but Lawton believes this estimate to be roughly accurate.¹⁷ About 55% are male. There is also a class element cutting across CPNZ, with most volunteers self-describing themselves as middle-class. For a few years, CPNZ included Asian Safety Patrols (ASPs), an initiative to assist NZP applicants of Asian origin and provide patrolling in Hamilton, Christchurch, and Auckland (Ten One Magazine 2012). Established in 2009, the initiative lost momentum by 2014, though there seem to be indication that it will be revived. Also, CPNZ was indicated as the possible home for the Tamaki Makaurau Pacific Wardens Trust during the consultations between the Auckland Council, NZP and the Ministry of Justice in 2019. This outcome did not materialise because Pacifika people did not feel the CPNZ represented their communities.¹⁸ A Wellington Pacifika warden group established in 2014, and another one established in Porirua, Wellington region, a year later operate under the umbrella of the CPNZ. Nevertheless, these exceptions confirm the rule that CPNZ is representative of white, middle-class New Zealand.

This demographic has implications on how CPNZ relates to the NZP as it entails a deep alignment between the volunteers and New Zealand’s dominant social, legal and political order. Saunders (1999, 137) argues that community policing involves ‘the mobilisation of state subjects into the coercive and ideological apparatuses of rule’. This mobilisation ‘collectivises and incorporates “civilian” into the practice of surveillance and, by extension, of the state’ (Ibid). CPNZ’s self-described role as an auxiliary of the NZP embodies the idea of community patrols representing an extension of the state. The set of relations binding the CPNZ, the NZP, and the state is thus not so much inherent in the regulatory framework. They are intrinsic to a shared social, political and ideological project.

CPNZ and the NZP also share a conception of policing emphasising law and order. Several patrol coordinators are former police officers, and the CPNZ maintains an association with the New Zealand Police Managers’ Guild Trust. This police charity distributes crime prevention education and provides funding for community organisations. Though patrollers do not engage in coercive policing, the CPNZ aims to ‘prevent crime and reduce harm through the active presence of trained patrols’ (CPNZ NA na). This emphasis on fighting crime and nuisance is apparent at the local level, too, with communities rallying ‘to fight back against the crime spike’ (Jacobs 2021), ‘seeking out their solutions to crime and disorderly behaviour’ (Jensen 2022) and ready to do something about ‘wilful damage and hooliganism’ (The Informer Mercury Bay 2022).

In the final analysis, CPNZ is a positive expression of New Zealand’s penchant for voluntarism and vigilantism. Nevertheless, the relations that bind it to the NZP and the state are rooted in its members representing the dominant sociopolitical order. CPNZ members not only support this order; they actively reproduce it through their ‘everyday policing’.

The pragmatic Māori wardens

Māori wardens coexist pragmatically within the state-framed policing landscape and perform policing functions as directed by and on behalf of the NZP. However, the relations between Māori wardens, the NZP, and the state are fraught with difficulties regarding matters related to authority, control and legitimacy.

Currently, at least 1,054 Māori wardens operate almost exclusively in urban areas of the North Island. The majority are women and over forty years old (Ministry of Māori Development 2013, 16). According to the Māori Community Development Act 1962 (p.5) and its regulations, District Māori Council (DMCs), or their delegates, nominate and supervise wardens. DMCs are Māori institutions operating parallel to the state and linked to the New Zealand Māori Council (NZMC), the national-level Māori institution with statutory powers to advocate in favour of the Māori Nation with the state. The Act, however, confers the Ministry of Māori Development (Te Puni Kōkiri, TPK) – a state institution – the power to appoint wardens for three years and the NZP the task of vetting applicants for the warrant, which bestows on Māori wardens some state authority.¹⁹ Moreover, the Māori Community Development Act Regulations 1963 (p.10) requires that Māori wardens maintain a ‘close association with the Police and traffic officers having jurisdiction in their areas’. Further, they must ‘endeavour to promote respect amongst Māori people for the standards of the community and to take appropriate steps where possible to prevent any threatened breach of law and order’. In other words, the regulatory framework places Māori wardens within the police-led plural policing landscape and demands that they support the existing social order.²⁰ Yet, Māori wardens are the latest iteration of historical forms of self-policing, and, in contemporary New Zealand, they are an expression of the Māori Nation’s ongoing quest for autonomy. Indeed, the constitution of the original Māori Wardens Association in 1968 stated ‘Māori self-determination’ as its objective (Fleras 1980, 508)

Māori warden’s role arches back to earlier forms of Māori self-policing, particularly to the days of the Kīngitanga, or Māori King movement, originating in 1858 with the crowning of Kīngi Pōtatau Te Wherowhero and the establishing of the wātene (wardens) as part of its self-government arrangements. Other precursors of the wardens are the pirihimana, or marae policemen, introduced by followers of the Ringatū faith at a similar time. A marae is a communal and sacred social, educational, and religious meeting space. Local communities bestowed on pirihimana the authority to enforce religious observance, levy fines for anti-social behaviour and police liquor consumption. Similar functions were later performed by the katipa of the Rātana faith (Waitangi Tribunal 2014, 254). The Komiti Marae established under the Māori Councils Act of 1900 is another precursor of the contemporary Māori wardens (Waitangi 2014, 254).

Their historical roots speak to the contemporary Māori Nation’s quest for self-determination. This quest is rooted in problems inherent with the different versions of the Treaty of Waitangi, formally annexing New Zealand as a British colony in 1840. The English version states the Crown is to have sovereignty. However, in the Māori version, the chiefs merely cede kawanatanga, the right to govern the country. Furthermore, the Crown promises chiefs undisturbed possession of lands, estates, forests, fisheries and other properties in the English version. In contrast, the Crown guarantees them full chieftainship of their lands, settlements and property in the Māori version. The latter includes the power associated with rangatiratanga, or autonomy.²¹ Māori have strived to assert what they see as their right to autonomy ever since, and especially since the 1970s when a Māori cultural and political renaissance reinvigorated this claim (Williams 2006).

In contemporary New Zealand, Māori generally do not see the dominant social order as fully legitimate since it primarily reflects the English interpretation of the Treaty. Their quest for autonomy is also based on the fact that the dominant order has not benefitted Māori. Only one in ten Pākehā household is in poverty, compared to one in five Māori and Pacifika (Rashbrooke 2015, 3). Māori and Pasifika are also less likely than Pākehā (and Asian) to own their own homes, are more likely to live in overcrowded houses and have poorer health and higher death rates (Marriott and Alinaghi 2021; Poata-Smith 2015). Their disadvantaged place in society contributes to their over-representation in the prison population (Workman and Tracy 2015). Though Māori represents about 16.5% of the New Zealand population, the proportion of inmates who are Māori reached 53.2% at the end of 2022 (Department of Correction 2022).

Although historically ambivalent, state support for the warden system increased from the late 1970s as governments identified it as a cost-effective mechanism to tackle the rising crime rate among Māori and the issue of Māori gangs (Waitangi Tribunal 2014, 270; On gangs see; Gilbert 2013, 38–66). Māori prison population had already reached 40% by 1971, when they only represented about 15% of the population (McIntosh and Bartek 2017, 169). State support for the warden system strengthened as the neoliberal practice of contracting out public services cemented. Māori wardens are now seen as state-sanctioned private security operators for local bodies, hospitals, businesses and the like (Hill 2004, 174). Through this lens, the Māori Wardens Project (MWP) is a clear attempt by the NZP to maximise the use of wardens.

The MWP, established in 2007 and jointly administered by the Ministry of Māori Development and the NZP, stemmed from the NZP’s belief that Māori wardens were an untapped resource that could be unlocked if resourced adequately (Ministry of Māori Development 2013, 15). It represents a mechanism to provide practical support to Māori wardens, including vehicles, uniforms, radios and equipment, and policing-framed youth and community safety training, and a coordinating and management hub of NZP and Māori wardens’ activities (New Zealand Police 2017; Ministry of Māori Development 2013).²²

The NZP view Māori wardens as part of the state-framed policing apparatus to provide a visible deterrent to crime and nuisance. The NZP may enrol Māori wardens to work alongside police officers at drink-drive stops, delegate them to traffic management duties, and support emergency and civil defence activities. The NZP may also enrol Māori wardens for large public events with a significant Māori presence, or when there is a need to deter tension. For example, the NZP called on the Māori wardens during the occupation of the Ihumātao site in southwest Auckland in July 2019. Māori consider the site of historical importance, and protesters demanded the cancellation of a housing development. For over two months, Māori wardens contributed to traffic management, liaising between protestors and NZP and helping manage crowds on-site (Ministry of Māori Development 2020, 10). The formal set of relations thus provide scope for the NZP to steer the Māori wardens to perform policing duties on the NZP’s behalf. However, Māori wardens relate to the NZP cautiously and instrumentally. They are weary of the stigma attached to being seen as working too closely with the police (or the state) and are apt at using the formal system and the authority that it bestows on them to operate as autonomously as possible. This transpires clearly in how they position themselves within state-society-policing relations.

Māori wardens acknowledge the relationship with the PKT and the NZP but see these as problematic because they are not based on maoritanga Māori (Māori’s traditions and ideals, and culture) nor Māori’s right to autonomy.²³ The same tension emerges at other levels and under different guises. For example, many wardens participating in the MWP were uneasy that the training programme was about policing and developed by the NZP. They argued Māori communities should design the training to reflect the Māori warden’s role and approach (Waitangi Tribunal 2014, 412–13). Māori wardens do not share the NZP’s law enforcement approach to social control. They favour an approach framed within the aroha ki te tangata (respect for people) philosophy, which allows people to define their own space and meet on their terms (see also Ministry of Māori Development 2013, 26). These differences lead to ambivalence on how Māori perform their functions on the ground. As one Auckland-based Māori wardens group representative said eloquently, ‘We do not get involved in the politics. At the end, we act as kaitiaki (guardians) of the land in the communities, and this is what we do’. The source underlined good relationships with the NZP but reiterated that ultimately, ‘it is about what we want to do as Māori, and as Māori wardens, and how we want to protect our people’.²⁴ This comment is not an isolated viewpoint. It reflects the Māori warden’s ethos as evidenced by similar comments of wardens in different localities and over the years (for example, see Laura 2017; Wynyard Quarter 2023; Radio New Zealand 2011; Tso 2021). In other words, Māori wardens relate pragmatically to the state and the NZP. They operate under the formal regulatory framework and the dominant state-society-policing relations. However, they do so with a mixture of compliance, accommodation, and defiance. This approach has a long history. For example, since early days, ‘few wardens exercise their legal powers, preferring instead, to work through persuasion or example, and in a spirit of manaaki (kindness), aroha (compassion) and rangimarie (peace)’ (Fleras 1981, 497).

The mixture of compliance, accommodation, and defiance has also allowed Māori wardens to discreetly expand their role. Indeed, although the 1962 Act mandates them to patrol establishments selling alcohol frequented by Māori, they have responded and adapted to the changing needs of their rapidly urbanising communities and progressively, de facto, increased their role to be akin to social services. They look after the kaumatua (respected tribal elderly) and support the rangatahi (the young) and whānau (extended family) in the Courts and through the Ministry of Children processes. They also work with the homeless on housing and food bank access and support teachers in implementing programmes that deter truancy and petty crimes. These functions are now accepted by authorities at all levels. This means that, in the last decades, Māori wardens have positioned themselves as a reference point for Māori and strengthened rangatiratanga (autonomy) on the ground.

Other expressions of Māori self-policing push the boundaries of state-society-policing relations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, iwi (tribal) actors collaborated in policing the traffic flow into Māori-dominated areas. These arrangements emerged organically following the initiative of the indigenous actors in what some scholars saw as a step towards Māori-led forms of self-governance in policing (Stanley and Bradley 2020a, 2020b). Worth noting that these policing arrangements also challenged the dominant, state-centred neoliberal paradigm as they represent Foucauldian, society-centred examples of plural policing arrangements in which power came from below (Māori communities) and the NZP was one node among others and arguably not the most important.

At the end, this section shows that Māori wardens are another positive expression of New Zealand’s penchant for voluntarism. However, the relations that bind them to the NZP and the state are fraught with difficulties as Māori wardens do not consider New Zealand’s dominant sociopolitical order fully legitimate. Māori wardens thus engage instrumentally with the NZP and the overall state-framed policing landscape, while de facto strengthening the Māori Nation’s autonomy through their social functions and ‘everyday policing’.

What it all means?

Several considerations follow from this article’s findings. The first is that the entrenching of neoliberal modes of governance in policing New Zealand has not weakened state power. It has changed, and arguably strengthened it. For example, through partnerships with CLPIs, the NZP reaches into communities that would otherwise struggle to reach, such as Pacifika, Asian and Māori communities. Second, though New Zealand has long dropped an official assimilation policy in favour of biculturalism, plural policing in New Zealand reflects ongoing assimilation tendencies that demands minorities, such as the Māori, to conform to the mainstream ideological and political project. Though this article maintained a broad-pattern analytical approach, it could only identify one example of society-centred plural policing assemblage, which was contingent only on the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. The third consideration is that plural policing is one of the most immediate and tangible facets of state power. Because of that, it reflects crucial cracks and fissures that persist in New Zealand’s contemporary political, economic and societal landscape.

Finally, this article points to possible new research streams. The case studies provide initial insights into the dialectical dynamics between broader political economy and plural policing. These need to be further explained through detailed ethnographic accounts. Also, this article provides lines of inquiry for comparative studies. For example, how do New Zealand’s state-society-policing relations compare to other Anglo-Saxon countries or settler states? Or how does the politics inherent in Māori warden’s policing compare to that of other First Nations’ policing initiatives in Canada or Australia?

Acknowledgments

I wrote the latest iteration of this article while on a fellowship at the Peace and Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)’s RegulAIR project. I am grateful for the feedback and support I received during this period, especially from Bruno Oliveira Martins and Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert. I am also grateful for the comments and support of the two anonymous reviewers, who have enormously improved this article. The research for this article was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee on 27 April 2022 for three years. Reference Number UAHPEC24225. Participants were provided information about the project and consented to use their interviews in publications.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

No funding to disclose.

Notes on contributors

Fabio Scarpello

Fabio Scarpello is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland. His research interests focus on the political economy of security governance, plural policing and security threats.

Notes

1. I am grateful to NZCP’s chairman, Chris Lawton, for his collaboration in conducting the questionnaire. The questionnaire was fully anonymous, meaning respondents did not disclose their location.

2. The NZP is also embedded in international policing assemblages, though I do not engage with this facet of plural policing in this article.

3. For more information, see the Poneke Promise website at https://wellington.govt.nz/community-support-and-resources/safety-in-wellington/the-poneke-promise. Last accessed 1 April 2023.

4. Interview with Duncan McLaggan, Manager Community Partnerships & Investment Connected Communities. Zoom, 2 June 2002.

5. Interview with two senior representatives of Māori wardens from Taitokerau and Tamaki Makaurau. Auckland, 5 May 2022.

6. Interview with a representative of NZSA, Auckland, 4 April 2022.

7. Ibid.

8. See Auckland Council’s list of BIDS program websites at https://bid.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/Pages/Contact-us.aspx. Last accessed 5 September 2022.

9. Interview with Tess Casey, CEO of Neighbourhood Community Support NZ. Zoom, 30 June 2022.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Interview with Chris Lawton, chair of the CPNZ. Auckland, 31 March 2022.

13. Data is available from the NZCP website at https://database.cpnz.org.nz/stats/national. Last accessed 20 March 2022.

14. Interview with Chris Lawton, chair of the CPNZ. Auckland, 31 March 2022.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Email correspondence with Chris Lawton, chair of the CPNZ. Auckland, 18 May 2023.

18. Interview with a source who requested not to be named. Auckland, 31 March 2022.

19. Between 1947 and 2014, the TPK was called the Ministry of Māori Affairs.

20. Consultations are underway for changes to the 1962 Act, modernisation of the Māori wardens’ functions, training, recruitment and relations with other Māori and state institutions. Māori wardens seek to be autonomous from the NZMC in the mid-term and fully autonomous (also from the state) in the long term. Hence, the inherent state/Māori tension described above is unlikely to change substantially any time soon. See Waitangi Tribunal (2014, 301–78) for insights into the issues discussed in the consultations.

21. There is a vast literature on the Treaty of Waitangi. Network Waitangi’s (2018) Q&A book is a concise introduction to the context that led to it and what the different versions entail.

22. The MWP led to controversies relating to ownership and control between the state and the NZMC, who claimed that Under the 1962 Act, the Māori Council had the power to control the wardens, but the MWP allocated such power to the TPK and the NZP. In 2014, the Waitangi Tribunal ruled in favour of the NZMC. The Waitangi Tribunal is a permanent commission of inquiry that makes recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to Crown actions which breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi. See the Waitangi Tribunal’s report on the Māori Community Development Act Claim (2014) for a detailed analysis of the case and how it relates to the ongoing discussions on the future of the 1962 Act and Māori wardens’ role.

23. Interview with Grace Le Gros, consultant for the Māori Wardens Project. Auckland, 5 May 2022.

24. Interview with a senior representative of Māori wardens from Tamaki Makaurau. Auckland, 5 May 2022.