Editorial: Families keep young burglars from prison

Matthew McKenzie, Dylan Christie, Ethan Daniel Poole and Robert Hales (not pictured) were saved from prison.

The fact that four young Whangarei men who committed multiple burglaries did not go to jail has been met with disbelief on news websites and social media.

After restorative justice meetings were held, the remorseful young men have apologised and more than $60,000 will be repaid to the victims. That money will eventually come out of the young burglars' pockets - their families will help pay it.

Along with the legal bills for the fight that kept Dylan Christie, Ethan Poole, Robert Hales and Matthew McKenzie out of jail.

They are all 19, bar Hales who is 18.

They are young enough for their mortified, disbelieving parents to probably wonder where they (the parents) went wrong. But it's not a parent's fault when this sort of thing happens.

At age 18-plus, these young men are considered old enough to vote, to drink, to head out into the world and study, or get jobs.

And to make their own decisions, even when they are bad ones.

Which is why they are lucky their parents did not take the view that, at age 18-plus, they should live with the consequences of their actions, without family support.

The most common reaction has been, "if they were brown they would have gone to jail".

One would like to think that if four young Maori men with the same level of whanau and financial support behind them had made the same arguments in court on their sentencing day, that they too would not go to jail.

A retired District Court judge has pointed out that the sentencing judge acted within the parameters of a justice system that allows for burglars to do time at home, on home detention. So while the sentence may jar, the reality is that the lawyers acting for these burglars presented all the factors possible when it came to the judge considering the sentence "discount".

Their skill and the family support were the key factors.

Their skin colour did not save these young men from jail, their families did.

For that these four young men should be eternally grateful.