This Icebreaker store at Auckland Airport was ram-raided yesterday. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
The Children's Commissioner has called on the Government to step in after a spate of crimes allegedly committed by children as young as 7 over the school holidays.
"It needs to happen now because these young ones, I'm sure they're hurting inside," Judge Frances Eivers told the Herald on Sunday.
"They're just babies, they're just young kids."
At least 45 children or teenagers have allegedly been behind eight crimes such as break-ins and ram raids reported over the school holidays.
Twenty-three people are either facing charges in the District Court or Youth Court, or referred to Youth Aid - with the other half still on the run.
The holidays started with two teenage boys being seriously assaulted during a party at a Remuera home on the Thursday before Easter and it ended yesterday with a group of youths ram-raiding an Icebreaker clothing store near Auckland Airport.
Eivers said whānau struggling with the cost of living, the impact of Covid-19 and rangatahi not being at school, or kids being at a loose end could be behind the crime wave.
Oranga Tamariki has said most of those involved in the recent spike are children it is already working with.
"Imagine if you come from a family where there isn't much money, where there isn't any food in the cupboard, where dad might be in prison, or there's domestic violence," Eivers said.
Despite these crimes happening during the school holidays, she suspected the young people involved have not been at school for a long time.
The Government is set to announce a package to tackle stubbornly high truancy levels, with more than 40 per cent of students now not going to school regularly - an increase of 10 percentage points since 2015, with huge disparities for Māori and Pacific children and lower-income households.
Eivers said these children deserved the opportunity to thrive, rather than be put on a path to prison.
She said the Government needed to direct community leaders to work together with the likes of iwi, local police officers, and Oranga Tamariki social workers to find a solution.
And affected communities needed to ask was how these young people ended up in such a position, Eivers said. She said it was hard enough being a teenager at the best of times.
Over the past two weeks young teens allegedly broke into cars on Kāpiti Coast, a 7-year-old was involved with a break-in at a Hamilton shopping centre, and a group drove through an Auckland mall, ram-raiding stores.
Three people holding hammers allegedly ran out of a Grey Lynn dairy late one night and into a car with a 12-year-old girl in the driver's seat.
The vehicle later slid into a tree. Police found a duffel bag full of stolen cigarettes.
Eivers acknowledged those involved needed to be held accountable for their actions but she said the answer wasn't about punishing them.
"We don't want this happening and we don't want this sort of offending to continue."
She said all kids made dumb mistakes.
"That's why we adults are meant to go out there and we need to make sure that they're safe. We need to teach them, to help them to make good decisions."
Assistant Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said the reasons young people were involved in these types of crimes were complex.
He said contributing factors included children being disengaged from schooling and their families, social media influence and the value of stolen goods.
Chambers said the issue wasn't new and pointed to a spike in recent months of young people involved in such crimes in areas of the country including Tāmaki Makaurau and Waikato.
"Police take this offending seriously and we are actively investigating and responding to these incidents when they are occurring.
"Where we are identifying young offenders, we are engaging partner agencies to address some of the wider issues in their environment which may be driving them to offending."
Chambers said police recognised the distress and frustration these crimes were placing on business owners in the community.
Oranga Tamariki director of youth Justice Ben Hannifin told 1News this weekend the situation was heartbreaking.
He said Oranga Tamariki met police daily.
"We are connecting in with the police about what's happened the night before and whether there are any young people in custody and then we sort of do our response depending on what we're working with.
"Our staff will do [a] really comprehensive assessment of them and their family to understand what's driven the behaviour and what that is can look really different depending on the young person or their family."
'If you're a human being and you've got feelings, how can you not be traumatised?'