The tough-on-crime approach to youth offending is the baton at the bottom of the cliff, both for the offender and the victim.
With the rise of politicians calling for more punitive measures to youth crime, we must remain logical in responding. Neuroscience tells us that such approaches may worsen crime rates. Instead of following arbitrary orders of using punishment to curb crime, we should remove young people under the age of 26 from the criminal justice system and respond to their offending using the youth justice system.
Politicians who call for harsher punishments ignore two crucial facts; we have a very high incarceration rate - there are around 170 people in prison per 100,000 New Zealanders, compared to the OECD average of around 147 prisoners per 100,000 people - and we have a bleak recidivism rate. Seventy per cent of prison inmates re-offend within two years of being released, and 49 per cent are re-imprisoned two years after their release from prison. High recidivism demonstrates that being tough on crime is not deterring most offenders from re-offending. Instead, imprisonment is setting young people on a lifetime of offending.
Tough-on-crime approaches do not work. Pushing for tougher sentences is like beating a dead horse.
There is scientific consensus that most brains are developing until age 25. A developed prefrontal cortex enables adults to balance long-term consequences with short-term rewards, predict and appreciate the risks of their behaviour, inhibit anti-social behaviour and control intense and negative emotions. A developing brain is impaired in these functions, predisposing young people to risky, reward-seeking behaviour.
These factors significantly reduce, if not eliminate, a young person’s criminal culpability. My criminal law professor once humorously described the maturation phase as the brain being “shut down for construction”. It is wholly unjust and misguided to equate a young person’s offending to the wrongdoing of an adult with a fully developed brain.
We should remove young people under the age of 26 from the criminal justice system and respond to their offending using the youth justice system, writes Shaneel Lal. Photo / Michael Craig
Young people develop lifelong interests in the maturation phase. They are neurological sponges of their environment. It is vital to keep young people in environments that model pro-social behaviours. Early exposure to prisons triggers young people to develop delinquent personalities, destroys their educational and employment prospects and deteriorates their mental wellbeing. The capacity of prisons to degrade and dehumanise undermines the therapeutic nature of any treatment administered in prisons.
The youth justice system is tailored to respond to the needs of young people. It has specialist judges, free youth advocates, focus on diversion, family group conferences, and automatic name suppression. A discharged charge that does not appear on the young person’s criminal record and young people may stay in youth justice residencies instead of prison. When these factors are present, the likelihood of rehabilitating a young person into society is promising.
The youth justice system is a response to offending. The prevention lies in eliminating social inequity. Some Auckland high school students work up to 50 hours a week to support their families to make ends meet, according to a recent media report. We know social inequity affects Māori and Pacific families disproportionately.
Taxpayers pay next to $150,000 annually to keep a person in prison. If the politicians are willing to splurge our money on keeping young people in prisons, why aren’t they investing in keeping young people out of prisons?
We must keep young people in education and create a pathway to sustainable income, and throughout the journey, we must care for their and their families’ wellbeing. Young people would not offend if they did not find themselves in a position where they had no choice but to offend.
Politicians who continue to pander to tough-on-crime approaches are voter-appeasing fearmongers uninterested in solving the issue. It reeks of institutionalised ageist and racist bullying. Tough-on-crime approaches are a short-term solution that blinds voters to the long-term permanent disaster.
Let’s get tough on the causes of crime, not the young people who become victims of them.
Shaneel Shavneel Lal (they/them) was instrumental in the bill to ban conversion therapy in New Zealand. They are a law and psychology student, model and influencer.
