So, the NZ government says it’s finally taking strong action on youth crime, following a wave of ram-raids, assaults, and other serious crimes. What is it doing? Zero tolerance? Harsh punishment? Increased police presence?
Oh, please.
You already know the answer: more cuddles and koha.
The Government says it’s taking further steps to tackle growing youth crime, announcing a “circuit-breaker” to crack down on young repeat offenders.
Children aged between 10 and 13 who repeatedly engaged in serious offending would have a fast-track intervention introduced within 24 to 48 hours of crimes being committed.
And that intervention will be?
This is, after all, the government which paid biker gangs millions to run drug rehabilitation and domestic violence programs. The government which doles out koha to the same gangs.
Funding of $2 million would also be spread across four regions – Auckland, Waikato, Northland and Bay of Plenty – to fund locally-led solutions to reduce youth crime.
The announcement was an extension of the Government’s $53 million “Better Pathways” package announced in September.
Newshub
So, what are they going to do, exactly?
Youth engagement and employment programmes will be amended to allow thousands more young people to participate. That includes the Youth Guarantee programme (1100 additional participants), He Poutama Rangatahi – Youth Employment Pathways (1400 more participants) while the Akonga Youth Development Community Fund has been extended to the end of next year to support another 2750 young people and whanau.
In addition, all children aged under 14 years old caught ramraiding in Counties Manukau or west Auckland would be referred to a “social wellbeing board” as part of a cross-agency intervention.
Newshub
Again, notably thin on detail of exactly what the “programmes” entail.
To get a clearer picture, it’s instructive to turn to the experiences of someone who’s worked at the coalface of similar programmes in the UK.
According to the Youth Justice Board, an [Intensive Surveillance and Supervision Programme (ISSP] is the most rigorous non-custodial sentence for young offenders. Now, I dont know about you but when I think of the word rigorous, in the context of dealing with criminal behaviour, I imagine some kind of negative consequence being visited upon the perpetrator in the interests of justice and also to act as a deterrent to committing future crimes. Sadly, this is not so, as the case of Perry so clearly illustrates.
“Perry” was an extremely violent young offender, with a serious rap sheet at an early age. So, was he jailed? Sent to juvie? Fined?
The most shocking aspect of Perry’s supervision was the amount of leisure and recreation that was being laid on for him by the Youth Offending Team and at the taxpayer’s expense […] these included, bowling, swimming, he was bought an annual membership for the local snooker club, taken to a stately home, taken on a naval battleship and everyday brought out for lunch to his favourite Scottish restaurant, Mcdonalds. This went on for the several months Perry was on the ISSP.
In the words of Perry, “I thought I was going to be punished, this is mad, I might steal another car to get back on it again,” he half joked.
Winston Smith – Working With the Underclass
Perry is far from an isolated case. As the blogger writes elsewhere, such leisure-as-punishment programmes are standard for the likes the Ardern government’s “Better Pathways”.
They will spend the majority of their ‘sentence’ being escorted to gyms, adventure centres, DJ courses and having their lunches bought and paid for and they will even be given the bus fares to attend their ‘punishment’. There will be a minimum of community work as part of their ISSP and in some parts of the country the Youth Offending Service will fail to implement this part of the ISSP. I know this will occur because I have seen it first hand.
Winston Smith – Working With the Underclass
At worst, they will be forced to sit in on classroom-based sessions, where staff will gently ask them about their “feelings” before they stole a car and rammed it into a jewellery store.
They will, by the way, complain bitterly about all these odious, taxpayer-funded intrusions. Cos it’s, like, a violation of the human rights’n’stuff, eh, bro? Probably “colonialist”, too.
The only advice I can give to you “colonists” is to invest heavily in bollards and security mesh.
