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Media Starting to Sing a Different Tune

Darroch Ball
Sensible Sentencing Trust

Something funny is starting to happen with some of the media and their views on youth crime.

Now, as everyone reading this knows, I have had a very clear and consistent view on what is going wrong with the Youth Justice system. In fact, if any of the mainstream media will just scroll down our social media pages or read through our multitude of press releases, they will see that my message has been clear and consistent.

As I have described to people I have spoken to about the number of predictions and ‘told you so’ moments about youth crime, it’s not that there is something complicated about it or that you need a PhD.  It is just common sense – if people just look, read, and research…and don’t drink the government Kool-aid all at once…or the media Kool-aid while we’re at it.

I was a Member of Parliament for six years from 2014, and ever since then, I have had a keen interest in the youth justice system. In particular, the fact that what successive governments had been saying about it didn’t add up, it wasn’t backed up by their claims of research or evidence, and certainly wasn’t backed up by the statistics that they themselves were providing. In fact, it was often contradicted by their own evidence. But what galvanised my interest and forced me to pursue it as much as I have, is the clear and willful blindness of the mainstream media.

A recent and plain example of this is the current spate of youth crime. The government says ‘tough on crime youth laws don’t work and we need to concentrate on the causes of crime’. The problem is that the media repeat these lines – then don’t follow up with the obvious question – ‘what tough on crime laws could you possibly be talking about?’

For the past decade or even two, New Zealand has had successive governments which have done nothing but try and keep youth out of the system. They have tried to, as they say, ‘concentrate on the causes of crime’. Fine, but it clearly is not working. All you have to do is ask yourself, in this deluge of ram raids and robberies committed by youth, what has the government done, said, or implemented that is any different from what they were doing before? The answer is literally nothing. That’s because they have zero clue what is going wrong – because they believe their own horse scat which they are rinsing for the media to print.

I started this by saying, something funny is happening with some in the media. That is because, for the first time in the ten years that I have been commenting on youth crime, they are starting to repeat my press releases back to me – even the old ones.

I stated a few years ago that very soon there would be a “wave of youth crime” if the government kept on fudging the statistics and if the system wasn’t fixed. I even came up with legislative solutions, was lucky enough to have one of them drawn from the members’ bill ballot, and subsequently had it voted down by all parties – including National and Act. Why? Because they all said, ‘our youth justice system is the best in the world and it is working.’ That was at the beginning of 2021 – then came the inevitable, and predicted, ‘wave of youth crime’.

Now what?

The media, and now funnily enough National and Act, have joined in everything that I have previously stated – we need to have the system come down harder on youth who commit these crimes. We need them to be held to account. Does that mean locking them up? Not necessarily.

But what we can’t have is half of these idiots not being caught, half of those who are caught not being prosecuted, and half of those prosecuted being given a wet bus ticket.

And folks, that is exactly what is happening.

Can we all not see why they think it’s ‘fun’ to post the video clip on social media and couldn’t give two-fifths what happens when they are caught – if they are caught?

The problem is the ones that are in control of the law, Labour and Greens, are so caught up in the fumes of their own ideological mistiness that they can’t see it’s the system itself that is broken – and has been for years. This outcome we are seeing now is the predictable, and predicted result of successive governments being wrong and failing to use just a little bit of common sense.

Yes, it is important to note that the reason the system and youth crime is in such a bad state is very complicated. It’s not one-dimensional. But I guess that’s why the government is having such a hard time figuring it all out – and the media certainly can’t get any click bait from ‘complicated’.

But, as a wise man once said: “There is nothing more antiseptic than saying I told you so…but I did.”

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