Hui tags youthful misfits

The country's top Youth Court judge says the most pressing issue for the justice system is "how to influence aggressive, impulsive, truanting teenage boys, often alcohol- or drug-dependent, with personality disorders and from disadvantaged and dysfunctional families, with anti-social friends".

Speaking at a hui in Nelson attended by police and Maori leaders, Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft said serious violent offences by young people were increasing and Maori were over-represented.

"We know what doesn't work. Bootcamps, scared straight, teen courts [judgment by peers] and shock tactics don't work."

Judge Becroft said greater involvement of family and community groups, and diversionary measures that avoided the court system were successful.

"We know that targeting drug abuse works, getting children involved in education, keeping them at school and alternative education works," he said.

"We know that targeting and reducing family violence works. The earlier young are bought into the court system, the harder it is to get them out of the court system."

About 80 per cent of young offenders caused 20 per cent of offences across all age groups.

But he said a pressing issue was dealing with the hardcore 5 to 15 per cent of offenders "who we need to be deeply concerned about". Maori were hugely over-represented in that group.

Judge Becroft said family group conferences, rather than being the "namby-pamby, Milo-drinking, Kumbaya-singing" that some critics thought they were, had been very successful.

He said social and economic factors clearly had a heavy influence on high Maori crime statistics, with research showing few serious offenders came from stable, two-parent homes with positive male role models.

The conference had already heard from Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Long, who said police needed to attract hundreds more Maori recruits to combat spiralling Maori crime rates.