More teens wielding knives - top judge

Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft. Photo / Greg Bowker

The country's top youth judge has warned evidence suggests a growing number of teenagers are carrying knives.

Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft told a youth mentoring conference in Mangere yesterday that youth violence was rising, despite a fall in overall youth crime.

Incidents involving violence with a weapon were increasing, and the problem of young people committing crimes armed with a knife was "almost certainly" going to become an issue as it had overseas, he said.

"It's an issue in central London, it's an issue on the west coast of America, and ... it's an issue in Australia. As night follows day, it will be an issue in New Zealand."

The number of all crimes recorded by police for young people aged 14 to 16 dropped steadily from the mid-1990s, in line with a general decline in crime.

But the number of assaults with weapons - the best measure of "knife crime", although it includes other weapons - rose over the same period, from 74 assaults in 1995 to 207 last year.

"We are concerned that assaults with a weapon have increased, and you have to be concerned at what may well be an increasingly important phenomenon of youth offending in the future," Judge Becroft said.

"We are only talking about small kitchen knives taken out by young people on the basis that others are taking them, so they may need them for defence."

He said most youth violence was linked to alcohol, and welcomed a recent Law Commission report proposing raising the legal purchase age from 18 to 20.

"When the legal purchase age was lowered, so was the de facto purchase age. The de facto age is now somewhere between 12 and 14," he said.

"If only the community realised how much of violent youth offending is committed by boys who are absolutely intoxicated - it's 80 to 90 per cent.

"Why are alcopops manufactured? Who are they manufactured for? Who is the target market? There are some big questions we as a community need to be asking."

The national director of the Big Brothers Big Sisters youth mentoring programme, Dave Marshall, said some young people had always carried knives, but in recent years more were actually using them.

"I wonder whether it's that lack of a sense of reality about using a weapon and being somehow disconnected from the reality of the impact of that.

"I could generalise about the role of the media and videos and things we play seem somehow divorced from reality."

He said mentoring programmes, which match disconnected youngsters with older people with similar interests, could help reconnect young people to society and foster feelings of competence and compassion.

Rob Woodley, of Mangere's Genesis Youth Project, said he aimed for a multi-pronged approach including community days, parenting education, and literacy and numeracy tuition.

"Everyone knows who the families are," he said. "We just need to get the supports in place for them and start working. I believe everyone can change."

THE PENALTIES
Assault with weapon: Maximum five years in prison.
Possession of offensive weapons or disabling substances: Maximum two years in prison.

THE FIGURES
Assaults with weapons by 14- to16-year-olds:
* 1995 - 74
* 2000 - 125
* 2005 - 229
* 2008 - 207