Report on Community Issues survey into vandalism in Motueka

Term 4 2009

After considering about 30 possible issues the class finally selected vandalism. It was a very topical issue with recent acts of vandalism being highlighted in the news. The class investigated vandalism in the news and recorded some of the acts especially in Motueka.

We followed the usual research steps including designing a questionnaire, interviewing people in High Street, tallying the results, graphing the results, compiling a slide show presentation and presenting the slide show to Community Board representatives David Ogilvie and Paul Hawkes and Grant Andrews from the Motueka Police.

The class hypothesis stated that "We believe that our community will think that vandalism is a problem and that graffiti is not as big a deal. Most people would never have vandalised other people's property including public property."

Over all we interviewed a total of 378 people over 4 days in November 2009. THe questions asked were:

Have you had any property vandalised?
Should there be a graffiti wall in Motueka?
Do you think vandalism is a problem in our town?
Is graffiti a problem in our town?
Have you ever vandalised property in Motueka?
What should be done to reduce vandalism in Motueka?
Do you know people who have vandalised property in Motueka?
What kinds of vandalism have you observed in Motueka?
Why do you think people vandalise other people's property?
Does vandalism affect you? If so how?
Have you seen any property vandalised this year?
If you have seen someone vandalise property what have you done about it?

We interviewed more people in the under 18 age group. With all the age groups together we almost had an even amount of males and females. 86% of our interviewees were residents of the Motueka district, although there was a fair number from outside the district.

57% of our interviewees believed that vandalism in Motueka is a problem while 28% believed it was not a problem and 15% were unsure or unaware of this issue. Just over half of our interviewees think that graffiti in our district is a problem.

More than two thirds of our interviewees had never had their property vandalised and the most common act of vandalism was letterbox damage (72) followed by car damage (34) and windows (32)..

Most of the people we interviewed believed that drunken behaviour (146)was the most common reason for acts of vandalism and then they thought thoughtlessness (112) was the next most common reason.

48% of our interviewees have witnessed vandalism of other people's property but 57% did nothing to stop or prevent it from occurring. Only 13% reported the witnessed act of vandalism to the police and 24% took some other action including trying to prevent it.

To reduce vandalism and graffiti 48% supported a graffiti wall, while 39% thought that the surveillance cameras were a great idea and 32% favoured tougher penalties.

Nearly 90% answered the optional question "Have you ever vandalised property?" and 80% of our interviewees claimed never to have vandalised other people's property. Of the 67 who admitted to vandalising property 17 stated that they did so because they were bored or they thought it was fun but 12 blamed peer pressure.

Conclusion:
Overall we found out that 57% of the people we interviewed believed that vandalism was a problem. 51% of the people believed that graffiti is a problem in Motueka. Some of the solutions that the public thought were a good idea for reducing vandalism, were a graffiti wall, surveillance cameras and maybe up the penalties.

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