Last week, the government proposed a new criminal offence to target ram-raiders that would carry a maximum 10-year sentence.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the Government had been taking serious action over the past year to address this type of offending.
Police figures released earlier this month showed there were at least 388 "ram-raid style events" in a six-month period to the end of May; last year, police recorded 516 ram-raids around the country.
Earlier this year, six ram-raids occurred in Invercargill over a period of two weeks. Last week, a business was ram-raided for the second time in four months.
Several arrests have since been made in relation to some of the incidents in Invercargill.
Southland Area Commander Inspector Mike Bowman said he was thankful police managed to make arrests following these incidents, which potentially prevented the trend from escalating like it did in certain areas of the North Island.
"We have noticed that there is an increase in retail crime across the city. We are working closely, particularly with the inner-city development, the shops. And we were actually doing a bit of a project on it at the moment to try and look at opportunities where we can improve going forward.
"Through our prevention teams, we’re actually working closely with the likes of the high-end [stores] that have been subjected to retail fraud."
He said the success rates of catching offenders of retail crime was increasing, in large part due to the implementation of Auror Loss Prevention Platform, which uses artificial intelligence to help identify offenders.
Insp Bowman said local police had certainly also noticed an increase in vehicular theft in the past six months.
He asked the community to assist police by reporting anything suspicious by phoning police or Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
