KEY POINTS:
Can you really predict whether someone is going to become a useful, law-abiding member of the community or a law-breaking waste of space at the age of 3?
A Government initiative to identify little ones aged from 3 to 7 with behavioural problems begins this year, a co-operative venture between the Ministries of Education, Health and Social Development. Kids who tick too many negative boxes - who are violent towards their peers, lack empathy, who are disruptive and self-obsessed - will be identified as at risk of becoming crims. They will be given lessons in how to behave appropriately, hopefully offering them an alternative path to the rocky one they're treading.
At the same time, parents and teachers will attend workshops to teach them how to respond when children are acting out.
According to one of the experts who advised the Government on the scheme, the success rate should be around 80 per cent and the expense - roughly $4000 a child - will be minimal compared with what it would cost to try to turn around the life of a teenager or a young adult.
If a child is allowed to continue to behave like a monster until they reach the age of 12 or 13, the cost will rise to $17,000 and the success rate will fall to 20 per cent. When teen terrors graduate to prison, there's virtually no show of redeeming them and, as we all know, the cost of keeping people in prison is a fearful drain on taxpayer dollars. So it's surely a win-win.
Oh yes, there'll be those who'll shriek about a nanny state and how the Government has no right to interfere in the family, but they need to go and sit on the naughty step.
For years, we've been begging someone - anyone - to stop the cycle of violence and woeful parenting that's produced generations of screwed-up New Zealanders.
A small group of people and their progeny cost this country millions in benefits, hospital care, social services and jail time. Surely, if we can identify which kids are being let down by their parents, and give the parents the skills they need to raise their children properly, we'll all be winners.
The Ministry of Education has apparently adopted an American programme, The Incredible Years, as its intervention for "children with challenging behaviours". That's what the ministry would call them. You and I would probably call them toerags.
The Incredible Years has been adopted by numerous agencies and countries, including Ireland and Wales, and studies show it seems to work.
The programme is also seen as an alternative to using drugs to control children's behaviour, and that's got to be a good thing. Why not give it a try?
Obviously, it will take time for a strategy such as this to show results, but we have to start somewhere.
I know the children who've died at the hands of their parents or caregivers were babies - too young to have been picked up by a scheme such as the one suggested by the Government. But they all had siblings, and perhaps if the parents had been identified earlier as being utterly incapable of raising goldfish, far less small children, the little ones might have survived. Very few people are actually psychopathic - most just need to know that there is another way.
In the absence of any other bright ideas, and given that the programme the Government is looking to introduce has a good track record overseas, let's give this a try.
