It is better to have a safety net at the top of a cliff to prevent a fall than an ambulance at the bottom to clean up the mess.
This saying can be likened to the current problem we face with youth crime in New Zealand, we seem to be at a loss on how we can rehabilitate youth offenders when we need to be looking at how we can prevent them from offending.
I spoke to a Child, Youth and Family Services worker, a mother that has a son who has recently committed an offence and some of the general public to see who they think is responsible for youth offenders choosing to commit crimes and what some possible solutions are to stop it from happening.
Child, Youth and Family Services worker, Duane King said:
“The fault lies in many areas, but in the end it was the choice of an individual that decided he or she would actually commit the crime. We cannot always be there to stop people from doing bad things we can only support and try to rehabilitate them once something has happened.”
I spoke to a mother who is a solo parent and for privacy reasons did not want to be named. Her son recently committed a crime and was sentenced to 42 hours of community service; he is now attending a welding course at a training institute in Hamilton and is enjoying and excelling in his work. She had this to say about the situation that she is in.
“ I had to cut down my work hours after the incident happened, its hard to support a family and work full time, but for me there is no other option. Even though for the time being I have to work part time and earn less money my son’s future is more important.”
She also said her son isn’t a bad kid just easily mislead and that some parents do nothing when their kids get into trouble and she wasn’t about to see her son continue in a path that may lead him to prison.
In the blog titled NZ Single Parents Trust it talks about youth crime and solo parenthood (which are statistically related) and talks about how many youth offenders come from single parent homes and highlights the struggle being a single parent in providing for your family by stating the following.
Where are most of these children coming form? Yes, you guessed it, single parents. There had to be a backlash for continuing to break families up by not giving them all the tools and finances they need to survive and on the other hand encouraging women to do it alone.I do not blame single parents for the problem because as a single parent I have had my fair share of challenges and I have had times when I seriously have not coped well.
I spoke to people that I knew and some of the general public to see who is to blame and what can be done and most of them gave similar answers which included all youth must be taught to respect others and be taught obedience through appropriate disciplinary measures. There was also a consensus that no one person or group was to blame for youth offenders committing crime and agreed that more preventative measures need to be taking to ensure it’s stopped before it starts.
As discussed in my previous blog there are theories of who is to blame for the way that some of the youth act in our society, but can all the blame be attributed to just one factor or a combination of things such as poor parenting, a society that doesn’t care and a media that loosely portrays violence as entertainment.
No matter what is to blame the real issue that should be focussed on is what we are going to do to prevent New Zealand youth from committing crime.
There are currently measures that have been put in place by the Ministry of Justice through there “Youth Offending Strategy” to prevent youth offending, such as early intervention, working with the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services and holding family group conferences.
But is this enough? The Ministry of Justice say that persistent youth offenders display a number of identifiable risk factors for offending, including:
-family problems, especially lack of parental supervision
-a lack of vocational skills or unemployment
-mixing with anti-social peers
-abusing drugs and alcohol
-impulsive behaviour and poor social skills
-anger and aggressiveness – both physical and verbal
These characteristics are found out after youth have offended by talking to those close to them. But what advice is given to people to spot these characteristics before they get to the stage where the commit crime.
There are also many agencies on a governmental and community level that have been set up to help troubled youth however wouldn’t it be better to target all New Zealand youth to keep all bases covered.
As for my opinion I really believe that the teaching of right and wrong starts at home and we have seen that most of these offenders come from broken homes. At the same time there are as shown in this entry parents who continually struggle to provide for their families on all levels. So it is the job of these agencies that have been set up to help youth to make everyone aware that they are there to help and not just those kids that come from a broken home but all youth because in the end anyone has the potential to commit crime and sometimes all the prevention necessary to avoid someone becoming another statistic in a prison cell is to take the time to help nurture and grow people that are in need of good role models and good teachings.
http://singleparents.org.nz/2006/12/26/youth-crime/
http://www.justice.govt.nz/cpu/crime-reduction-strategy/youth.html?search=true
http://www.cyf.govt.nz/
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