Youth crime: Young offenders often child victims of family violence, neglect

Haami Hanara knifed a man to death at the age of 14. Photo / NZME

Children and teenagers who commit serious crime tend to have things in common - backgrounds of violence and abuse, involvement with Oranga Tamariki, out-of-home placements into care, social deprivation, and stand-downs or expulsion from school. Open Justice reporter Ric Stevens looks at who are the young people appearing in our courts.

Haami Hanara, who knifed a man to death when he was 14, did so after a childhood of neglect and abuse.

He has no memory of his biological mother and received little adult supervision during his childhood, often left on his own in a house with no-one looking after him.

He lived a deprived life. He was exposed to drugs, violence and gang-related criminal activities from an early age.

Oranga Tamariki got involved with him when he was 6 months old but the attempts by state authorities and his extended family to help him were inconsistent and ultimately ineffective.

One night in March 2018, Hanara was one of a gang of youths who attacked Kelly Donnor when he was sleeping rough in Hastings.

Hanara was holding a knife and stabbed Donnor four times. The 40-year-old man died at the scene.

Hanara was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 2019, but that conviction was later quashed by the Court of Appeal.

He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to two years and 7.5 months in prison in August 2023. He then was allowed to walk free because of the time he had already spent in jail.

Hanara has now begun a new life, outside Hawke’s Bay where he grew up.

Who are our young offenders?

Hanara was one of a small number of young offenders under the age of 17 - fewer than 100 a year - who end up in an adult court for the most serious offences.

Of the 1545 young people aged 10 to 17 who appeared in the Youth Court in the year ended June 2023, 72 were convicted and sentenced in adult court.

Just over half of the young people entering the youth justice system ended up with an absolute discharge for their wrongdoing - a procedure which ends the process as if the charge was never filed. A further 27 per cent had their charges dismissed, discharged or withdrawn, according to the latest Ministry of Justice statistics.

Eighty-two per cent of young offenders were males, nearly two-thirds were Māori, and 21 per cent were European.

Theft, burglary, robbery and committing an act intended to cause injury were by far the most common reasons for young people ending up in Youth Court.

A security camera image captures teenagers trying to break into a store in Hamilton. Photo / NZ Police

Although at the high end of serious offending, Hanara’s profile contains many of the factors commonly found in the backgrounds of children and youth coming to the attention of the criminal justice system for less serious crimes.

If you want to know what a young offender looks like, imagine a child who has been a victim.

A Ministry of Justice report in 2019 said almost all - 97 per cent - of the 10 to 13-year-old children who had offended seriously enough to warrant formal proceedings had been the subject of prior child welfare notifications to Oranga Tamariki.

This was also the case for 89 per cent of adolescents requiring a formal outcome.

“Child offending does not occur in a vacuum,” said another report, in 2022, “How we fail children and what to do about it”, which examined longitudinal data of children born in New Zealand in the year 2000, who had then ended up in the youth justice process.

The data on these young people showed “very high” levels of abuse, reports of concern to Oranga Tamariki, out-of-home placements into care, social deprivation, and stand-downs or suspensions from school.

The report was produced by Professor Ian Lambie, of the School of Psychology, University of Auckland, clinical psychologist Dr Jerome Reil, Judge Andrew Becroft, who had recently been the Children’s Commissioner, and researcher Dr Ruth Allen.

It focused on children who offended between the ages of 10 and 13, many of whom would go on to become offenders in adolescence and adulthood.

The research found abuse and neglect in early life significantly increased the risk of offending. Most of the children had been the subject of family group conferences for welfare issues.

A ram raid at a bottle store captured on CCTV in Auckland. Photo / Supplied

The risks of offending also increased for children with a parent who was involved in the criminal justice system, and for those whose parents primarily relied on benefits.

Children at low-decile schools were more likely to offend than those at higher-decile schools, as were those who had been stood down or suspended from school before the age of 10. Repeatedly changing schools also increased the risk.

Some studies have begun looking into the children’s neurocognitive deficits - the relationship between offending and conditions such as foetal alcohol syndrome, caused by a baby’s exposure to alcohol while still in the womb.

Various studies have found that boys under the age of 14 are two to three times more likely to offend than girls their age. The earlier they start to break the law, the more likely it is they will keep doing it. A high-risk group comprising about one-fifth of children coming into the system are responsible for more than half of all offences in their age group.

The trauma to prison pipeline

The phenomenon of disadvantaged and abused children becoming offenders as they get older has been described as a “prison pipeline”, whereby significant child welfare concerns lead to child offending, then involvement with the youth justice system, and the adult criminal justice system as people become old enough.

Ian Lambie, who is also the chief science adviser for the justice sector, refers to it instead as a “trauma to prison pipeline”.

“Basically, you don’t get a child offending as a teenager severely who hasn’t come from a violent, abusive background. It’s a very rare phenomenon. It really doesn’t happen,” he told Open Justice.

“And these kids often come from drug, gang, violent, neglectful backgrounds, where they obviously don’t get the parenting, loving, caring support [and] nurturing they need.”

This is reflected in a 2018 discussion paper produced by the office of the Government’s then chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, which noted 80 per cent of child and youth offenders grew up with family violence at home.

Children with a parent in prison were 10 times more likely to be imprisoned themselves in future than were non-prisoners’ children.

A Ministry of Justice study in 2019 found young Māori were nine times more likely to appear in the Youth Court than non-Māori.

This is reflected in the statistics of those children and young people receiving orders or sentences if their offending is deemed serious enough to receive a court outcome.

Of these youngsters, 71 per cent were Māori, 18 per cent New Zealand European and 7 per cent Pasifika in the year to June 2023.

Other studies found Māori were also more likely to receive harsher sentences.

As overall youth crime declines, so do the number of Māori coming before the youth justice system, but the proportion of them has been rising.

The Human Rights Commission concluded as long ago as 2012 that such findings showed evidence of structural discrimination and unconscious bias in the justice systems.

Most children and young people appearing before the courts are aged 14 to 17. Children aged 12 or 13 can only be charged with serious offences (attracting a maximum sentence of more than 14 years) or if they have offended before.

Children aged 10 or 11 can only be charged with murder or manslaughter.

A police officer speaks to two teens wandering about on a school day. A lack of engagement with school is seen as a risk factor for youth offending. Photo / File

Of those receiving orders or sentences in the June 2023 year, 27 per cent were for robbery or extortion; 19 per cent for burglary, breaking and entering or unlawful entry (a category which would include ram-raiding); 16 per cent for assault; 15 per cent for theft.

The balance were thinly spread over a wide range of other offences.

Young ram-raiders, usually teenagers, are an appropriate group to consider in more detail, because they have been at the top of public concerns over law and order in the past two to three years.

They are also easy to typecast as out-of-control troublemakers with no concern for their victims’ livelihoods or the wider community, fuelled by adrenaline and the prospect of TikTok notoriety.

A police study in 2022 identified 79 of the worst young ram-raiders from an examination of thousands of charges laid.

It found they all came from unstable, impoverished households with poor parenting and inconsistent role models.

They had all been victims or witnesses of family violence. They all had fathers who had been involved with the justice system.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.