KEY POINTS:
I was at a symposium run by author and free thinker Amy Brooke recently. As she does every year, she'd assembled an assortment of people and speakers on a variety of subjects, one of whom was Greg Newbold, the criminal sociologist.
Newbold has written a book on the history of prisons in New Zealand and gave a summary of his findings, and what he said broke my lefty heart.
I have always thought that if you cared enough about people, gave them the love and attention and opportunities they'd been denied by their woefully inadequate families, you could save them.
But Greg Newbold says that, in effect, nothing works. Not early intervention, not separating first-time offenders from hardcore offenders, not tough punitive punishment, nothing. Zip. Nada.
Newbold says there are some people in our community who have been damaged so badly by their surroundings as infants they have little chance of ever leading a normal life, and then there are others who simply don't want to live by society's rules.
They don't want a mundane job where they earn the basic wage. They want the money, the excitement and the mana of being a crim.
You don't have much status if you're working in a factory, but if you're a hard-ass bank robber, then your own kind put you at the top of the totem. Newbold says that some criminals eventually get sick of being in jail, usually those who find the love of a good woman, but others just see it as an occupational hazard.
It was fairly depressing stuff but, after reading Newbold's book, I don't think Ron Marks' bill to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 12 and effectively do away with Youth Courts is the answer. I'm with the principal Youth Court judge, Andrew Becroft, who wants more early intervention and data sharing between the police and Child, Youth and Family so toe rags can be traced through the system.
Andrew Becroft's findings are similar to Greg Newbold's - Judge Becroft said a large group of youth stopped offending once they were caught and dealt with by police or the Youth Court, but a group of about 3000 persistent offenders were likely to become adult offenders. In Judge Becroft's words, they're unexploded human time bombs.
Putting these kids into prison is delaying the inevitable. And locking away the poster boy for kiddy crime, Bailey Junior Kurariki, doesn't seem to have worked. He's been denied early release every time he's come up for parole. The bad news is when it comes to hardcore offenders, very little works. There is no good news.
