KEY POINTS:
Teenagers who break the law are being held in adult police cells because of a lack of agencies willing to look after them in the community, according to an official report.
A review of youth justice placements, completed in December but just published on the Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) website, has found that young offenders aged 14 to 16 placed in police cells jumped by 56 per cent from 450 in 2002 to 703 in 2005.
But since the report was written, the number has dropped back by a third, from 278 in the first five months of last year to 195 in the same period this year.
Police cells are meant to be used only for short periods while offenders are waiting to be interviewed, but have been pressed into holding both adult and youth offenders for longer terms in recent years as the country's jails struggle to cope with record numbers of prisoners.
The youth placement review by Nelson consultant Tony Saxon says serious youth crime has also risen faster than the number of beds in CYFS youth justice residences.
The number of youths aged 14 to 16 charged with violent offending rose by 69 per cent from 935 in 2000 to 1576 in the year to last June.
There are only three secure youth justice residences, with a total of 108 beds, in Manukau, Palmerston North and Christchurch. A proposed new 32-bed residence costing $30m to $40m near Rotorua was stalled by local objectors last year and is still going through planning processes for a site on farmland 12km south of the city.
But Mr Saxon says the problem has been exacerbated by Youth Court judges switching sentences from "supervision with activity", which allows offenders to stay at home, to "supervision with residence" which normally means two to three months in a CYFS residence.
Sentences to supervision with activity (SwA) dropped from 67 in the first seven months of 2004 to 47 in the same period last year, while supervision with residence rose from 94 to 141.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests the amount of work required to develop and fund a SwA plan for an individual young offender [(CYFS) social work task] and SwA programmes in the community [community service provider task] is onerous and a deterrent to using SwA," Mr Saxon says.
His report urges CYFS to create a dedicated team of SwA advisers with a ring-fenced budget that can't be diverted to residences.
Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft said yesterday that the SwA sentence had become "virtually extinct" in much of the country. Only one teenager was given the sentence on the North Shore last year, six in Auckland, 13 in Waitakere and 14 in Manukau.
Waipareira Trust's "wrap-around programme", based in Papatoetoe, is believed to be the only active programme in the region, with eight social workers and 150 teenagers of whom a fifth to a quarter are under supervision with activity.
"When the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act was passed in 1989, supervision with activity was lauded internationally as a hugely innovative way of dealing with young offenders in the context of their own community, rather than segregating them and aggregating them together in institutional environments," Judge Becroft said.
"It has withered on the vine, which has been an enormous concern for everyone in the youth justice community."
Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro said the sentence kept youngsters away from more serious offenders.
CYFS head Ray Smith said the Government was now determined to boost supervision with activity and other community-based programmes through a $12 million increase in youth justice funding.
"We want the programme to be measured against its ability to reduce reoffending, and in local communities lots of people have ideas and initiatives which could work," he said.
However the chief executive of South Auckland agency Tamaki Ki Raro Trust, Sharon Wilson, said agencies needed to have some certainty of numbers if they were to set up community programmes.
"You might have none for some weeks and then you might have 10. It's just too spasmodic to be sustainable."
Ms Wilson said agencies would also need to be funded to work with the offenders' families.
"You can have kids here that do great during the day. We pick them up, but we are taking them back into that same environment, so to work with them on their own is wasting time - you are just setting them up to fail."
On The Web: www.cyf.govt.nz
Teenagers in jail
* More teenagers are being held in adult police cells, partly because judges have changed their sentences.
* Judges are switching from "supervision with activity", which allows offenders to stay at home, to "supervision with residence", which normally means two to three months in a CYFS residence.
* A report says the home-based sentences are difficult to arrange because few agencies are prepared to look after difficult teens in the community.
