OPINION
New Zealand: Youth justice system 'fails' with young criminals
Children aged 10 to 16 are responsible for almost one in four crimes
committed in New Zealand, but they are not being adequately punished,
says the Police Association. A lack of secure facilities for serious youth offenders,
“soft”
judges and social worker apologists were all helping to rear the next
generation of criminals, police officers who work with young recidivist
offenders told Police News.
The newly retired Youth Aid Section supervisor at Canterbury police
district headquarters, Chris Roper, told the union magazine that the
youth justice system in New Zealand was “weighted in favour of the
offender and the poor relation in the whole system is the victim”.
Mr Roper said a handful of teenage recidivist offenders were
“offending flat out”. “They learn very quickly that meaningful consequences take a long
time to come. These offenders are between 10 and 13 years of age and
they need to be securely contained so they can be re-educated and
rehabilitated. But with the way the system is, with a lack of resources,
it's just not happening.”
With only 30 “care and protection” beds nationwide, youth offenders
often ended up in overcrowded remand cells, the report said. Three youth offender facilities are being built
— which will bring
the total to seven — but police say they will be insufficient.
Mr Roper said the Children and Young Persons and Their Families Act
spoke of empowering families but overlooked the fact that many child
offenders came from “severely dysfunctional drug and alcohol-soaked
families”.
Child, Youth and Family (CYF) kept sending young offenders
“back with
these families that have caused the problem in the first place”.
Furthermore, the justice system is hamstrung when it comes to dealing
with very young offenders, who are more mature than they were 43 years
ago when the Crimes Act was enacted, police say. Police were also frustrated by changes to the Sentencing Act in 2002,
which increased the age of indictment from 16 to 18. This meant that hardcore recidivist offenders, who would previously
have spent between 12 and 18 months inside, were being sent to
supervised youth residence facilities for just two or three months.
One offender in Christchurch racked up more than 100 convictions
between the ages of 14 and 16, despite being sent to a secure facility
on nine separate occasions. He has since turned 17 and is now in jail.
Justice Ministry figures show arrests of under-17-year-olds have
increased more than 40 per cent in the past decade, from 32,457 in 1991
to 45,522 in 2000.
Since the early 1990s, young Maori have made up almost half of police
apprehensions of children and young people and are over-represented in
arrest statistics in relation to the total population, just as in the
adult prison population (51 per cent).
A census of prison inmates in 2001 showed 62 per cent of men and 53
per cent of women received their first conviction between the ages of 14
and 19.
Police Association president Greg O'Connor said although early
intervention had its place, recidivist offenders who continually
“thumbed their nose at the law” should be housed in secure, specific
youth facilities. “It's a matter of finding a balance between the level and seriousness
of youth offending and the needs of society.”
How the system works
Children between 10 and 13 years can be prosecuted only for
indictable offences (those that warrant trial by jury); other offending
must be dealt with in the Family Court. The Youth Court deals with
offending by 14-year-olds to 16-year-olds and can transfer serious cases
to the District Court or the High Court.
However, the Crimes Act precludes a child under the age of 10 being
convicted of any offence, while 10-year-olds to 14-year-olds can be
convicted only if it can be proven they knew “either that the act or
omission was wrong or that it was contrary to law”.
17 February 2004
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3548700&thesection=news&thesubsection=general
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