Diversion and Graffiti Abatement Programmes - A New Direction

Ted Ninnes

Graffiti is a major problem in most cities of the industrialised world, with huge sums spent trying to eradicate it. Estimates include $4 billion in the US and $800 million in the UK. These costs are being justified as part of the “Broken Windows” attitude to low-level crime, which argues that effective policing of low-level crime will have a beneficial flow-on effect for more serious crime and the general enhancing of community safety. This approach, first implemented in New York in 1989, has been tried in many countries, including New Zealand, with significant success.

This paper looks at the graffiti management programme initiated by the Hamilton Safer Communities Council. The programme used a number of strategies, but a central component was to catch “taggers”, and immediately put them into a diversion programme in which they cleaned away graffiti. Evaluation of this pilot showed that it was successful in greatly reducing the amount of graffiti.

We argue that the programme provided useful and effective strategies for the elimination of graffiti from Hamilton City, and that such strategies should be considered in the formulation of graffiti management strategies for other cities in New Zealand and further afield.