John Minto: Spiral towards juvenile violence

Gang activity is nothing new in low-income communities but the latest incident is particularly ugly in its senseless violence and juvenile brutality.

The surface factors involved are easy to identify. Importation of American gangster music and street culture alongside violent videos and video games, which desensitise young people to killing, both play their part.

For these factors to bring a group of young people to a brutal murder first requires a strong sense of alienation.

This alienation is easier to trace. It has a multiple of factors but its roots are in poverty. The simple, incontrovertible fact is that the violent gang culture that led to the tragedy on the weekend is not active in middle-class or high-income communities.

However, this is not the only side to low-income communities despite the media spotlight on the negatives. Most parents are keenly interested in the education of their children. At one secondary school in Otara, a meeting this year to discuss what students need to pass Level 3 NCEA and gain entry to university drew more than 300 parents on a cold night. On a separate evening, more than 200 came to hear what their children needed to pass Level 1 NCEA.

As a rule these parents are on higher incomes, have stronger family and community relationships and higher educational achievement in their extended families.

This is not the case for most of the alienated youth who take so strongly to street gang culture. For the most part, the young people involved see no positive future for themselves and the adoption of a gang culture gives some meaning and purpose to their lives.

They are from families on the lowest incomes - part of the 30 per cent of our children who live below the poverty line. Many have grown up in families where no one has ever had a full-time job. For some, their parents once worked in the manufacturing sector and earned good money. Those jobs were decimated in their tens of thousands by the infamous 1984 Labour government, and when they were eventually able to find employment again it has been in low-paid, part-time work.

Instead of unemployment the problem now is over-employment, where several family members work a series of part-time, low-paid jobs to bring in enough income to keep the family going. Growing up in this reality is tough for everyone involved.

As well as the normal problems faced by teenagers these are often exacerbated by breakdowns in family and community relationships. Often these parents have low self-esteem and low expectations of their children.

For a family to watch its standard of living fall as opposed to those of us who grew up while standards of living were low but steadily rising is demoralising and emotionally crippling.

This leads to young people with poor self image, high truancy rates, low educational achievement and strong at-risk characteristics.

After six years of another Labour Government what is there to bring some hope to these families? Introducing income-related rents five years ago was a plus but since then it's been a long, slow, downhill slide. Labour feels no pressure to act, on the basis that people in low-income communities won't shift their allegiance to National.

For this reason there is no timetable to reduce poverty and the Working for Families package does not help those on the lowest incomes. Even after this package is put in place, 175,000 of our children will still be living in poverty.

What about education? One might think the schools in low-income communities would be better resourced. Yes, there is a small amount of extra funding from the Government but this is swamped by the additional income other schools receive from parent fees and foreign, fee-paying students.

A comparison of a typical Decile 1 secondary school in the poorest community shows it has 25 per cent less funding per student than a same-sized Decile 10 school when these factors are taken into account. There is no sign whatever that any of this will change. The poor can go to hell in a handcart as far as Labour is concerned.

Pushing the problems back on to the community without the resources to make up for decades of neglect is not a solution. It is, however, the most likely outcome and the issue will slip from public attention. Till the next time.

* John Minto is National chairperson of the Quality Public Education Coalition.