KEY POINTS:
For years, Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft has been telling anyone who would listen that our youth justice system was not working for the worst persistent offenders.
"The real challenge in dealing with youth offenders is not the 80 per cent who commit only a small number of crimes," he told a Maxim Institute conference in March.
In fact a Ministry of Justice study in 2000 found that 25 per cent of young males commit an offence in their teens or early 20s. Ninety per cent of them never get to court - they are let off with a police warning or an apology or reparation, and most never appear in the crime statistics again.
"The real challenge," Judge Becroft said, "is dealing with the much smaller group of young offenders who do come to court, especially the 5 per cent who may commit up to 50 per cent of all youth offending.
"They are unexploded time bombs. How we deal with this group is one of our country's biggest and most profound challenges."
In a submission to Parliament this week on NZ First MP Ron Mark's private member's bill to lower the age of criminal responsibility, Becroft described these persistent offenders, who typically started their criminal careers in primary school and are doomed to graduate to adult jails unless something is done:
* 85 per cent are male.
* 70 to 80 per cent have a drug and/or alcohol problem.
* 70 per cent are not at school - most not even enrolled at school.
* Most come from dysfunctional and disadvantaged families and lack positive male role models.
* Many have been abused and neglected.
* Many have some form of psychological disorder and show little remorse or empathy for their victims.
* At least 50 per cent are Maori.
When police were asked to profile 20 candidates for a new centre for youth offenders in Hamilton, Te Hurihanga, most of them had seen or been victims of family violence. The families of many were involved in gangs.
The most serious youth offenders who commit extreme crimes such as rape, aggravated robbery and murder - about 60 youths a year - go straight to an adult court even though they are under the "adult" age of 17.
But for the next group down, who may have committed 30 or 40 offences such as burglaries by their early teens, Becroft says the only sentencing options for the Youth Court are:
* Supervision for six months with a tailored individual programme under a Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) social worker.
* Supervision with residence, which means three months (two for good behaviour) in one of the three CYFS youth justice residences at Weymouth, Palmerston North and Christchurch, followed by six months of supervision.
* Supervision with activity, which means three months of community-based activity, then three months of supervision.
This last sentence, Becroft says has become "virtually extinct" because, after an initial burst of enthusiasm when the sentence was created in 1989, CYFS has allowed community-based programmes to wither away.
Another Wellington-based Youth Court judge, Carolyn Henwood, says two months in a CYFS residence isn't enough time to do much before a young person is sent straight back to an often-dysfunctional home. "You can't untangle the mess of these young people in eight weeks," she says.
Becroft says throwing young offenders together simply "exacerbates their problems".
"In the long term it costs the country far more downstream in the costs of educational under-achievement, welfare dependency and so on," he says. "Should we be spending more money to deal with these most challenging young people in their own family settings, working with a more individualised approach?"
He says there are a few good programmes around. He cites Pro-Active Ventures in Papatoetoe, which sends youngsters to the Waiouru Army camp and provides long-term mentoring when they go home. There are similar programmes called Boys to Men in Hastings and Start Taranaki in the rural district of Kaponga.
"All are run by strongly charismatic men who have a brilliant ability to relate to young, violent boys," Becroft says.
But there are just not enough of them. Henwood says: "I've been a Youth Court judge for 22 years and tried to gather all the data on what there is out there. You'd be surprised how little there is."
Seven years ago, Henwood resolved to do something about it. She set up a trust, the Henwood Trust, and started talking to government, business and community leaders about a new model based not on a short-term lock-up but on long-term therapy for both offenders and their families.
"I searched the international scene, but New Zealand is a leader in youth justice and I found nothing out in the world to impress me," she says.
"The ideal is to have every child in a good family, but that's not achievable. You can't build a whole thing for one person."
So she settled on what seemed the smallest-possible facility to provide for the therapeutic, educational and cultural needs of persistent young offenders. "Eight [beds] was the minimum I thought could work."
Originally, she envisaged a pilot facility in a rural area "so they would have access to gardens, have animals, build boats, that type of thing".
She chose Hamilton because the area featured well up on the statistics for the imprisoning of young men.
After several years of lobbying, then-Justice Minister Phil Goff announced in 2002 that a pilot programme for eight young offenders would be set up in the Waikato with funding of $2.85 million over three years. The scheme would "probably be expanded to five locations", he said.
Its name, Te Hurihanga (The Turning Point), emphasised the goal of turning youngsters' lives around.
The project has been unusual. Henwood wanted to avoid burying it inside either of the two bureaucracies which run youth justice, CYFS and the Corrections Department. She suggested, and Goff announced, that it would be run by a separate crown trust. But that did not happen. Instead, it is now the sole operational part of the Justice Ministry's policy and legal branch in Wellington.
Nor did the rural location eventuate. The ministry proposed first a site in Frankton, then one in Melville, and after local opposition in both places it took up an offer from Anglican Action to build in the Te Ara Hou village in Morrinsville Rd, which also houses a retirement village, a home for sole mothers and other social agencies.
As Henwood says: "Government departments pursue their own way of thinking."
Well before the ministry adopted the project, Henwood had contacted the late Maori Queen, Te Atairangikaahu, who supported it. She also visited a marae-based residential alcohol and drug programme for teenagers run by Te Runanga o Kirikiriroa in Dinsdale.
"The boys don't run away from that. When I saw that, I realised it was quite possible. They stay there for a year," Henwood says.
"They wanted to be part of this as well. But the tender was finally let to Youth Horizons Trust instead, mainly because Youth Horizons Trust has the background of doing residential programmes for difficult young people."
Instead of Henwood's dream of gardens, animals and workshops, the ministry has built a large house with two wings surrounding a paved area with a basketball hoop, separated from neighbouring houses by a high wooden wall. Justice minister Mark Burton cut the ribbon on April 27.
There are eight single bedrooms, four in each wing - one wing for new entrants who will stay there seven days a week for up to six months of intensive therapy, and the other for those who move on to a second stage where they spend some time outside in mainstream schools, training or work and begin to go home for weekends.
One fulltime and two part-time psychologists run a regime where youngsters are rewarded for good behaviour by being allowed to watch TV, listen to music, play on PlayStation and make phonecalls. Bad behaviour results in privileges being withdrawn.
A "skills trainer", who doubles as the teacher until a fulltime teacher is found, works with the boys to build social skills such as communication and anger management, and a kaumaatua, Pita Te Ngaru, has helped to reconnect them with their hapu and iwi groups.
Residential staff cook and look after the boys, with a minimum of three staff on the premises each night. There are quarters for "house parents" to make the facility feel like a family, but Youth Horizons Trust can't find a couple willing to do that job.
At the same time, a therapist and an acting whanau worker (again, a fulltime whanau worker has not yet been found) have started working with the families of the two teenagers accepted into the facility so far.
"If it's a parenting intervention that's required, it's teaching them skills to parent better, such as enhancing the supervision that is occurring in the household and enhancing their understanding of their child's developmental needs, and discipline - higher use of praise than punishment, and increasing consistency," says the clinical leader, Maria, who did not want her surname used.
In the third and final stage, after about a year at Te Hurihanga, the young people will return to their families. Therapists will then work in what is called "multi-systemic therapy" with the youths, their families, schools or workplaces and all other parts of their social environment for a further three to six months.
IT'S a challenge, and Te Hurihanga manager Dave McCarthy says it's early days for the two families engaged so far. One may drop out because their youngster has run away from the facility three times.
"Although the families have a great many difficulties, they don't love their children any less," says a psychologist, Di. "What they are lacking is the skills. Often parents might have a range of anti-social behaviours themselves, but they still want the best for their children."
Henwood, who remains an adviser to the project, has enlisted The Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall to rally local businesses to help find jobs for the youths. "Stephen has supported me with this idea for the whole seven years," she says.
"Our part is trying to get jobs and apprenticeships when they come out of this facility. The content is crucial. I'm trying to make sure they have relevant things to do, like building a boat, setting up technological links with other kids in other schools."
The project has not had an auspicious start. Its first two youngsters have run away together twice in the past month, and one of them absconded a third time a week ago.
A Youth Court judge told them after their second runner that they would not get a third chance, so the one who has run again is not expected back.
A local Hillcrest Action Group, formed two years ago to oppose the facility, feels its worries have been vindicated.
"They seem to leave the area pretty quickly when they do abscond, but what is to say that one time they won't do that?" asks spokesman Craig Appleton.
The Hamilton City Council wants to ban facilities for court-ordered clients from residential areas. Submissions to its district plan close on August 6.
Henwood admits to feeling "distressed" about the runaways.
"This programme is not suitable for absconders. It's suitable for young people who have got to the point that they want to make a change," she says.
But Di, the psychologist, says running away has to be expected at first.
"These are young people who existed for a long time as independent, self-directed entities. It's quite a realistic expectation that they would struggle to be in this environment," she says.
A colleague, Richard, says: "It's an extinction effect. When a behaviour is no longer useful, you get a burst of that behaviour as the person tries to find other ways to achieve their ends. In this case we expect excesses of behaviour and diminishing over time."
Maria says: "It's hardest for the first two. They can't see someone already in stage two with more privileges, doing things in the community, perhaps doing some work."
Some Hillcrest residents have formed a support group for the facility. Te Ngaru says some residents of the neighbouring retirement village have come on their walkers to give their best wishes.
On the day the Weekend Herald visited , Anglican Action had been over with morning tea and a waiata.
"Our young man has probably never been exposed to people behaving in such a warm, supportive, caring and non-judgmental way," says Di.
The Anglican Friary of the Divine Compassion, across the lawn from Te Hurihanga, told the city council in a submission on the proposed plan change that such facilities needed to be in residential areas to provide "positive active role models" and "interaction with helpful and supportive neighbours".
A residential location meant the availability of nearby parks, sports grounds, churches, volunteers and "sounds of brightness, laughter, joy and play".
Henwood pleads for the city to give the facility a chance.
"I believe it's world-leading," she says.
"I admit that there is a lot of resource going into it, but it's the first time any resources have gone into this area. It's not just government, it's also business and the Maori community, which has so many of its young men caught in the youth justice system.
"Somehow, we have got to try something for those people other than just locking them up and doing nothing.
"I do have faith in what we have come up with. Where the difficulty lies is in getting it working properly."
