Little Criminals: The Story of a New Zealand Boys' Home
by David Cohen, Random House, $39.99
The Epuni Boys' Home in Lower Hutt was one of many residential institutions run by various New Zealand governments after World War II. The homes were operated up until the late-1980s and their objective
was short-term correctional training for juvenile delinquents.
David Cohen was an "inmate" at Epuni, and he tells an intriguing story of how it was run, its successes and failures.
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the Western world, so the history of Epuni will not come as a surprise to the reader. But, as one inmate said: "If this experiment was ever meant to do anything it pretty obviously failed. The little criminals became the big criminals."
The accommodation, facilities, diet, work and supervision are all explained by the author - there was routine, work, routine, regulation, routine, and strict discipline. However, history shows that it was not entirely successful, indeed if at all. But with modern criminal psychology in its infancy, what else could successive governments do to control the violent activities of young criminals who came mainly from poor backgrounds - it was a serious social problem that went back to the 19th century.
A newspaper editorial from 1895 stated, "the children of the poor today have less regard for law or authority".
At the time, this correctional training was judged to be the most effective means of control and rehabilitation.
But let us not judge past actions by current thinking as we were not there to analyse the situation and make the difficult decisions.
Perhaps the real tragedy of our time is that many New Zealanders still feel that such institutions are the only way to solve our existing problems with young offenders. I believe the best we can do is to learn and think even more deeply and carefully as to the possible solutions.
