KEY POINTS:
This month has seen a succession of juvenile crimes that have left the public demanding answers from those in power. The offences have ranged from fouling property with graffiti to assaulting others for fun, robbing dairies at knifepoint and killing when accosted. People are asking what is wrong with our leaders that they have not come up with solutions to youth offending in a country such as this.
We are just four million people in a pleasant, prosperous land surrounded by ocean. How hard can it be to police this society so that children are protected from drugs, gang influences and other insidious pressures that can turn them into menacing and violent street predators?
People want practical answers to that question, not tough talk about law and order or soft social excuses. And they certainly do not want to be fobbed off with figures such as they hear issued from academic safety. This might not be the worst crimewave on record; people might even be statistically safer from crime than they sometimes think they are. Statistics are not the issue - injury and death are real.
Political leaders gearing up for an election year will be monitoring the mood and must have heard the demand for answers. John Key's "state of the nation" speech yesterday was given over almost entirely to the subject. Helen Clark's response today needs to be as well considered and constructive.
The National Party leader offered a number of interlocking ideas. First he suggested new educational and training programmes for school leavers under 18. He would waive tertiary fees for them but deny them income support if they did not enrol for a course
Those who commit crime would face a tougher jurisdiction, some new custodial programmes and a strengthening of several agencies already trying to turn youngsters from a criminal career. National proposes that serious offenders as young as 12 and 13 would be dealt with by the Youth Court rather than the Family Court, and the court would be given three new orders, the first applying to the child's parents. They might be forced to attend parenting courses and given a fine or community work if they did not comply.
Civil libertarians will complain that parents might be punished for the crimes of a child but the ineptitude or negligence of parents plainly contributes to many cases of juvenile offending.
The court would also be able to order the youngster to attend a mentoring programme, giving them the more wholesome, quasi-parental influences of agencies such as Project K and Big Brother for as much as a year. National promises to fund the agencies for that capability.
Likewise, young offenders could be ordered to attend drug or alcohol rehabilitation programmes that are sufficiently funded for the task. It may be hard to believe that children as young as 12 and 13 need drug treatment but young gangs are using early addiction as a tool of recruitment.
For offenders over age 13 National proposes to give the Youth Court some new residential sentences, which it will call "fresh start" programmes. They may involve up to three months' residence at an Army facility. This will be welcomed by hardliners if not by the military, who have never regarded criminal rehabilitation as part of their professional purpose. But the Army has provided such programmes before to good effect.
Those are the sorts of solutions the country needs to hear. The problem has become too serious for punitive measures that merely serve political postures. National has given evidence of solid research and settled on some practical steps.
Today the Prime Minister needs to do more than recite what her Government has done to deal with crime. Clearly it has not done enough.
