Aaron Hendry: Why Christopher Luxon is right on youth crime, and also wrong

CCTV image of youths running through a South Auckland mall during a brazen ram raid in April. Photo / Supplied

OPINION

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 implemented in Aotearoa before, and hasn’t worked very well.

But that one 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 current system is “good enough” as it is.

Yes, that ‘solution’ was misguided – but Christopher Luxon and National should be acknowledged for recognising there is much more that can be done for the young people our system is failing.

While for the most part youth crime is on the downturn, Luxon is right to highlight that we do have a group of young people that simply aren’t having their needs met. These young 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.

A crowd outside the electorate office of Jacinda Ardern in Morningside as dairies around New Zealand protest at rising violence and the death of the Rose Cottage worker Janak Patel. Photo / Joey Dwyer

In my role as a youth worker, I’ve seen first-hand how the current 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 possibly 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 whānau due to fears for their safety, but are instead discharged into homelessness via emergency accommodation.

More than 5000 young people are due to transition out of state care in Aotearoa at the moment – but just 132 supported accommodation options are available. This means an overwhelming majority will be either 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 at-risk 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.

Aaron Hendry. Photo / Jessie Chiang, RNZ, File

The wider context for many is, of course, poverty – and any government serious about supporting young people and keeping communities safe will ensure whānau have support to enable parents to be at home with their kids.

It will tackle poverty by ensuring all our whānau 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.

The reality is, our communities are often aware of tamariki who are at risk of being pulled into crime. Criminal justice expert and Auckland University professor Ian Lambie recently highlighted that if a report of concern was made about a child under the age of 5, they were markedly more likely to become involved in crime as a child and again as a young person.

In the same report, he highlighted a lack of resourcing in the community and high caseloads within Oranga Tamariki as reasons we’re not responding early enough. These can be resolved through targeted allocation and prioritisation of our resources.

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, divine image bearers. 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. There is so much more that can be done.

It’s time we took a moment 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.

If we want a real solution, we need to stop reacting and start responding. Only then will things change.

Aaron Hendry is a youth worker, a rangatahi advocate, and a commentator on social justice issues.