Police Minister Mark Mitchell is confident the government will deliver on its tough-on-crime promises, but says it is unrealistic to expect the situation to change overnight.
In the past week, three jewellery stores were hit - two in Auckland were targeted by masked thieves while customers were in store; the third was in Whakatāne.
Indian jewellery store owners are disappointed the government has failed to reduce crime amid a recent spate of aggravated robberies.
But Mitchell told Checkpoint the government was giving police more powers.
However, he could not say when New Zealanders would start to see results.
"That's not realistic that we're going to have a crime-free nirvana overnight.
"It's critically important that New Zealand starts to move towards being one of the safest countries in the world."
Mitchell said the social fabric had been "torn" where young people felt comfortable using weapons and violence.
He said there were a range of levers that the retail and security sectors could use.
Woolworths has started trialling facial recognition technology, which Mitchell said was successful.
"There's a whole lot of things that we can do across retail, police, security and of course there is a big part to play in the social agencies too in terms of dealing with the intergenerational harm that we continue to see and have to deal with as a country.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell says the social fabric in New Zealand is "torn". Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Organised gangs
Mitchell denied criminals were making a mockery of the government's promised crackdown.
"I don't think they're thumbing their nose at our policies at all."
Instead, there had been a big improvement in the way that violent organised gangs were policed, he said.
"In the last six months now, you haven't seen them taking over provincial towns or taking over public roads or abusing or intimidating members of the public en masse. Police have been very effective in putting more resources into that, for the first time we've seen the use of Eagle actually monitoring those convoys," Mitchell said.
He said the government was "fully committed" to giving police more powers.
The was a big improvement in the way that violent organised gangs had been policed, Mitchell said.
