Editorial: Reaching the disengaged sometimes takes one to know one

Fete Taito was a state ward, a street kid, senior gang member, drug dealer, drug addict, prisoner and then a university graduate. Photo / Michael Craig

EDITORIAL:

There is a side of New Zealand where people live out their lives in simmering suspicion of authority and anyone who speaks and dresses well.

New Zealanders who live these lives build up their own de facto families, leaders, support networks, mentors, loan-providers and even babysitters. We're talking about gangs and extended family groups with hangers-on, disengaged from the rest of their communities.

These people are unlikely to respond to helplines on doctors' waiting room posters or to be reading the latest articles in a newspaper on how to maintain good diet. They are even unlikely to answer the door to health or social support workers, lest it be a bailiff or an arrest warrant being executed.

Tragically for themselves, and the rest of the country, they account for a disproportionate level of hospital admissions and prison sentences - skewing New Zealand's health, justice and mortality statistics.

Reaching such people is a massive challenge, let alone beginning to address their issues of drug abuse, mental wellbeing, ill-health and lingering resentment which manifests in crime and social disorder.

Taito was living in a mindset when people asked what he did, he would respond, "Why? Are you a cop or something?" And there be the rub for any efforts to lift our low perfomance in so many statistics.

But citizens such as Fa'afete Taito (featured on pages 25-27 today in the Herald on Sunday) presents one potential way. He knows what goes on in the boys' homes, gangs and jail because it was his life.

Taito was living in a mindset when people asked what he did, he would respond: "Why? Are you a cop or something?" And there be the rub for attempts to lift our low performance in so many statistics.

It would be naive to believe every mobster who declares themselves made over and ready to work for the good of the society. Most residual offenders can also pull a pretty good impression of Paul having witnessed the blinding light from Heaven on the road to Damascus.

It certainly appears however, that Taito can hīkoi te kōrero and we need more such people who can do the talking and walking on this side of New Zealand for all of us. Hopefully, they can help reach and lift the disengaged - for their sakes and everyone's.