Police Minister: Better parenting needed to tackle youth crime in Gisborne/Tairāwhiti

Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell and Mayor Rehette Stoltz at Thursday's ShakeOut exercise at Wainui Beach School. Mitchell, in his role as Police Minister, spoke with the Gisborne Herald about the issue of increased youth crime. Photo / Murray Robertson

Investment in better parenting is key to dealing with increased youth crime in Tairāwhiti, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says.

“Police always have to deal with what society throws up and, unfortunately, right now throughout the country, we have a problem with youth crime, particularly youth violent offending.”

Mitchell was in Gisborne on Thursday in his role as Emergency Management Minister for the national ShakeOut earthquake and tsunami exercise.

“As a Government we are trying to strengthen the laws around it,” he said.

“Local police do an outstanding job dealing with it but a whole-of-community response working together is what’s needed.”

Mitchell said they needed to identify families at risk.

“We need to get some investment in there to get the kids back to school, to get them making good decisions, not bad decisions and ending up in our youth justice system.”

Police were fundamentally doing their job, he said.

“They will identify, investigate, arrest and charge youth offenders.

“The rest of the justice system is not supporting police the way it should be with consequences that ensure the violent youth offenders get taken off the streets and out of the community where they can do harm.

“Those individuals need to be put into a place where the focus can be rehabilitation and [they can] turn their lives around,” he said.

“Bringing everyone together in a joined-up strategy is what’s needed. That would involve police working with councils, iwi and hapū groups, social service groups, residents and so on...work together, understand what’s happening and come up with a strategy that everyone agrees on is the way to move forward with this issue.

“The mums and dads of these kids have a big part to play in it, too, because there needs to be greater parental responsibility shown,” Mitchell said.

“I’m not naive. I know some of these families are so deeply dysfunctional - where the parents don’t know how to be parents. There are parents who are just not interested in their children and are not parenting the way they should be.

“We need to make some investment in that area and work with them as part of a strategy to deal with the youth offending issue.”

Meanwhile, the Minister indicated Tairāwhiti could at some stage be a focus for the type of major gang crackdown that happened this week in Ōpōtiki.

“The National Crime Unit never talk about what they’re doing or where they’re focused because of the nature of the work they do” he said. “But I’d give a shout out to Tairāwhiti police on this...they do an outstanding job around the gangs here.

“They understand the amount of harm gangs cause in the community and they police it accordingly.

“It’s for local police to decide if an operation like the one in Ōpōtiki happens here.

“We’ve been clear as a Government that we’re clamping down on gangs. They’ve grown too big, too strong. They are carrying firearms, are willing to use them and they peddle meth and other drugs, causing misery in the community.

“Life as a gangster in New Zealand is getting much tougher. Gisborne is included in that focus, without a doubt.”