A CLOCKWORK CHOICE

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?” Anthony Burgess posed this question in his novel, A Clockwork Orange, which explored the free will of humans to choose between good and evil, and the cost of attempts to restrain that freedom.

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.