KEY POINTS:
Establishing a truancy database is the key to keeping children off the "carousel of crime", the National Party says.
Law and order spokesman Simon Power said improving drug-and-alcohol and work programmes in prisons was also crucial to cutting crime.
"You have at that point a captive audience," he told a public meeting in Mt Maunganui yesterday.
Mr Power quoted principal Youth Court judge, Andrew Becroft, who said young people skipping school were prone to criminal behaviour.
"The first step is to locate these kids and find out why they're not in school," Mr Power said.
He and Bay of Plenty MP Tony Ryall spoke to an audience of about 80 people, most elderly, at the 1pm meeting at St Mary's Church Hall.
Mr Ryall said crime was becoming "more and more of an issue for mainstream New Zealand".
"We have all been shocked by some of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated by young people and on young people," he said.
The audience applauded the pair and voiced concern about issues including the drug P and violence against police.
A woman asked Mr Power why resources were not focused on truancy officers in schools, but he said a national database was needed to monitor children who moved from place to place.
In August, the Government introduced a computerised enrolment system to keep track of children at schools, including monitoring truancy.
It plans to have the system in schools nationwide by year's end.
But Mr Power told the Herald his system would focus purely on truancy - "that would be the first priority" - and said he had little faith in the Government's ability to deliver on the other system, after promises over three successive elections.
At the meeting, he also pledged to introduce parenting orders tied to the courts, saying parents and caregivers must take responsibility for young people's behaviour.
He claimed the Government had softened its policy against organised crime, confiscating fewer assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act 1991 despite case numbers increasing.
Figures had dropped from $3.6 million in 2002/03 to $1 million last financial year, he said.
But Justice Minister Mark Burton said Mr Power was selective in the numbers cited.
"He doesn't mention that the average amount seized over the past decade is around $1.1 million, which is about the same as the amount last year."
He also disputed a comment by Mr Power that the Government had secretively dropped a bill to replace the act.
Mr Burton said a new bill incorporating everything in the old bill, and with additional provisions to create a more effective regime, was approved for introduction to Parliament in September. However, Mr Power said the Government was not doing enough to fight crime, with violent crime rising more than 10 per cent in the last year and 26 per cent since 1999.
"So another quarter of violent crime has come into our world," he said.
The cost to the economy in 2002-03 had been $9.1 billion, more than $7 billion of which was paid by private citizens installing burglar alarms, increasing insurance premiums and replacing stolen property.
The rest was the cost to the taxpayer of police and the Corrections Department.
Mr Power accused the Government of a "$500 million budget blowout" on building four new prisons, saying it had estimated the cost at $400 million in 2002, but the bill was now closer to $1 billion.
Prisoners were enjoying luxuries such as flat screen televisions that ordinary families could not afford.
"It's getting to the point of ridiculous," he said.
Less needed to be spent on LCD TVs and landscaping at prisons and more on drug-and-alcohol and work programmes.
He said prisoners could be employed picking fruit, for example, to equip them with skills.
"Like landscaping," a member of the audience said to laughs.
With only 20 per cent of the 7600-strong prison population currently working, prisons were "an academy of crime", Mr Power said.
