There is a Clock Work Orange quality
to the current wave of youth
crime currently sweeping through Kaitāia where schools are
regularly vandalized;
and now set afire. Small business owners are subject to robbery
by organised gangs of youth, adept in diversion and counter surveillance. And CCTV cameras have become pointless when
all that is seen is the same generic hooded
image.
Mobile phone
technology means thieves on the inside can be supported by lookouts on the outside,
and mobs
can be gathered and dispersed with a few thumb jabs. In response, community
patrols have been lauded, but how sustainable are they? The law protects
youth from the discipline of their own parents, so how likely is it that a
group of strangers will have any effect?
The perpetrators are better organised, are in better shape, and are motivated
to outlast any public relations effort.
Curfews have been suggested, and elsewhere in the country some
communities are even instituting hoodie
bans to counteract youth crime.
Currently there
are only two ways forward being proposed in Kaitāia: the use of force and / or
a significant investment in social intervention.
If the
consensus is for force, then a bigger hammer will be needed in the shape of
more laws, more Police, Court and Corrections staff, and bigger prisons. That’s
not really tenable, but the likelihood of a sizable social investment in youth also
seems untenable given that the welfare system is being gutted and no
additional money for schools, health care, or recreation has been budgeted. So unless Kaitāia comes up with its own
sustainable strategies, someone with a dystopian agenda will eventually
do it for us.
In the short
to med-term Whānau Ora
money, already promised, might be used to try and turn youth offenders and
their whānau around. Increased numbers of Māori Wardens might help police and defuse
potential trouble. Shop owners and business people might hire locals, instead
of another relative. Local neighbourhood watch patrols and a reward
system for information that leads to the arrest of criminals might be set up.
These are
all worthwhile strategies in themselves, but they’re based on the view that changing
our externals will change someone else’s internals. From Cain to A Clockwork Orange proof abounds that such a view is wrong. To paraphrase Ezra Taft Benson, “The
world would take our youth out of the slums, but better we take the slums out
of our youth, and then they take themselves out of the slums.”
Drive around
Kaitāia and you’ll see large empty buildings matched by large groups of
empty-eyed youth with lots of time and few options. Kaitāia too has few options,
but it has even less time in which to choose.
