Luxon is right on youth crime — but also wrong
It’s all well and good sending a young man to Youth Court and offering counselling, an education programme, and access to a range of supports — but if he doesn’t have safe or stable housing, how can he be expected to create meaningful change in his life?
When it comes to young people and our justice system, we’re at crisis point — and political solutions until now aren’t giving this misunderstood group a chance to flourish.
Three weeks ago, the National Party announced boot camps as its latest solution to youth crime. It copped plenty of criticism — largely because it’s been tried before, and didn’t work very well.
But that ill-fated idea shouldn’t kill the conversation and fool us into thinking we can’t come up with a better one, or that the system is “good enough” as it is.
Yes, that “solution” was misguided — but Christopher Luxon and National should be acknowledged for recognising much more that can be done for the young our system is failing.
While for the most part youth crime is on the downturn, Luxon is right to highlight that a group of young people aren’t having their needs met. These people are dealing with huge amounts of complexity, and so far I have not seen strong policy from the Government that can respond to it.
As a youth worker, I’ve seen firsthand how the system continues to fall short in providing what young people need to make a change for the better.
It’s all well and good sending a young man to Youth Court and offering counselling, an education programme, and access to a range of supports — but if he doesn’t have safe or stable housing, how can he be expected to create meaningful change in his life?
I often see rangatahi who are either experiencing homelessness when they enter the justice system, or don’t have a safe environment at home to go back to. I’ve met young men who aren’t allowed to be discharged to their whā nau due to fears for their safety, but are discharged into homelessness via emergency accommodation.
More than 5000 young people are due to transition out of state care in Aotearoa — but just 132 supported accommodation options are available. This means most will either be at risk of or experiencing homelessness when they leave care. This is a genuine crisis.
One practical way the
Government could respond is to create legislation that would prevent a government agency from exiting a young person into homelessness.
This would place responsibility on the justice and care systems to ensure young people have supported housing and would drive budget bids, meaning the Government would have to fund supportive accommodation services to meet this need.
Considering housing insecurity and a lack of safe and supported housing is a key part of why many of our young people struggle to reduce their offending, this action alone could improve outcomes and become a massive protective factor against the risk of offending.
We also need to design and implement better services for our atrisk young people — those with intellectual and physical disabilities or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, those who are neurodiverse, and those with complex mental health or addiction issues.
There is also a need for us to better resource the Youth Court, so that young people put in front of a judge are swiftly provided with access to good representation, and provided with the resources and support they require to swiftly respond to their needs.
It should be pointed out that all these solutions are needed before we even start looking at early intervention. This is obviously critical — and there is so much more that could be done to address the key drivers that lead children to crime.
The wider context for many is, of course, poverty — and any government serious about supporting young people and keeping communities safe will ensure whā nau have support to enable parents to be at home with their kids.
It will tackle poverty by ensuring all our whā nau have liveable incomes, and put serious investment into communities so that they are empowered to hold and heal their own, ensuring we’re able to respond to our children’s needs long before that child becomes involved in crime.
In all the noise surrounding ram raids and boot camps, we’ve forgotten a simple truth. At the centre of these crimes are human beings — real people. Whether they be business owners or traumatised kids, both are worthy of more than empty rhetoric or reactionary outrage.
National is right: we are failing our kids. It’s time to step back from the partisan nature of the conversation, and put the safety of our community and our young people back at the centre.
Aaron Hendry