The government has now announced its answer to the alarming and growing ram-raid statistics. Cuddles and hugs.
“Children under 14 years old caught doing ram raids will be given intensive support to steer them away from crime, and towards study and work.”
RNZ
“The move is part of a $53 million Government package extending education and employment programmes to thousands of at-risk young people.” Youth crime response package focused on support, study and work
Not a word about responsibility or reparations. The fact that under 14-year-olds are unsupervised to the extent that they can perpetrate these vicious attacks on businesses (and it is only a matter of time before an innocent person is killed), raises the question of the responsibility and duty of care of their parents. If they care so little about their children and society at large, then this costly and ill-thought-through Labour intervention is highly unlikely to make any difference at all and is simply yet another failure in the making.
I wrote last week about the drivers of crime – not referring to the drivers of ramraid vehicles, but I may as well have, as the drivers of crime seem irrelevant to this Government.
The anti-smacking law of Sue Bradford was the beginning of this long road to anti-authority, a way of life now for successive generations. I happen to have a certain sympathy for the anti-smacking league as I do not believe that children should be physically disciplined; however, that is not to say that I am against parental responsibility, discipline, boundaries, and tough love – I am absolutely all for those. If the complete lawlessness that these young thugs engage in reflects their upbringing, then how is the latest expensive announcement from Chris Hipkins going to help? Or does he consider that the “intensive support to steer them away from crime, and towards study and work” will happen in a vacuum? Without any need for parental engagement? Without parental backing and the desire and ability to get their kids to school with Weetbix for breakfast and a Vegemite sandwich and an apple for lunch? Tell him he’s dreaming.
Inspector Brent Register from Police Headquarters said: “These are children that are struggling to find their place in the world. There are a lot of social issues before there are criminal issues.”
NZ Herald
He ticks through the problems from just one of many common indicators – poverty. “These are children who don’t have shoes to go to school, or turn up at school with no lunch, or don’t have hot water to have a shower so don’t go, or don’t have a uniform.”
Given that the social issues precede criminal issues, wouldn’t it make more sense to involve the parents of these delinquents? Require them to be parents? This is a parenting issue before it is a social issue. Make the parents responsible for their kids and the crimes they commit. That is, after all, what being a parent means. Being responsible. But these days responsibility is always that of someone else. And that someone else is society at large as we all, one way or another, pick up the tab for the lack of parenting that these kids experience.
But no, yet more of our hard-earned money will be misdirected in yet another misguided attempt to sort out a problem with more and more millions. “The $53 million Government package extending education and employment programmes to thousands of at-risk young people.” If these kids are failing to attend school for their education, how does “extending” their education help?
Employment programmes for thousands of at-risk young people? I thought we had record low unemployment. Where are these thousands of additional jobs to come from? Will the extended-educated kids want them? So many choose not to work as evidenced by the increasing numbers we support to do absolutely nothing. And yet these at-risk young people are to be miraculously educated in an extended fashion and line up for the thousands of extra jobs presumably created especially for them. Again, someone needs to tell Chris Hipkins that he is dreaming.
In 2018, the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor released a report called “Using evidence to build a better justice system”. The report […]showed the danger of an enforcement/conviction-led approach to troubled youth.
NZ Herald
One section stated that “prisons are extremely expensive training grounds for further offending, building offenders’ criminal careers by teaching them criminal skills, damaging their employment, accommodation and family prospects, and compounding mental health and substance use issues”.
I have no doubt that prisons are “extremely expensive training grounds” and that a more effective process for dealing with these kids needs to be developed, but the family unit, so despised by the socialist model, has been broken down over so many years that our societal glue has run out. We have lost touch with the values that saw society bound, to greater or lesser extent, by basic tenets of careful living. And we are now facing the consequences of that.
The government’s failure to address the issues of housing, seeing thousands in emergency accommodation, aka motels, and living in cars, is not the way to build strong, resilient, supportive, and capable communities. Indeed, it is these social issues that feed the criminal issues.
Of Better Pathways, National party leader Christopher Luxon says it’s window-dressing, and the government should have focused more on penalties and punishment.
RNZ
In a different interview it was said, National Party leader Christopher Luxon is calling on parents of young offenders to take responsibility for their actions.
Speaking to AM this morning, Luxon said he was concerned that truancy rates were up around 55 per cent, with 100,000 students deemed to be chronically truant.
He said this was a major driver of the ram raids being committed by youth and encouraged parents to think about what was going on in their families.
“If you don’t know where your 12-year-old is between midnight and 5am in the morning, if you’re not laying down boundaries for your kids, if you’re not actually waking up in the morning and getting your kids to school… isn’t that the primary responsibility for us as parents to set our kids up so that they have opportunities we didn’t have and that they can go forward and get ahead in life?”
NZ Herald
How is the so-called Better Pathways model announced by Labour going to help in the face of parental truancy? These kids and their crimes are the responsibility of their parents.