We have disenfranchised Māori and Pacifica youth attacking business primarily staffed by exploited Indian and Chinese migrant workers while the white middle class fear of this crime is pimped by corporate media crime porn clickbait and exploited by Right wing Politicians.
It’s an immigration friction point clusterfuck.
It has led to a debate by ACT and National arguing over whether or not they put ankle bracelets on 11 or 10 year olds.
The number of serious repeat ram raiders is about 100, 80% of whom are already known to welfare agencies who are the kids from John Key’s draconian welfare reforms that saw kids in cars, state house tenants thrown onto the street for wrongful meth testing and whose parents were incarcerated in our private prison industry.
We know statistically that many of these youth are being abused at home, a home National and ACT want to ankle bracelet them to!
The mainstream media who are fuelling the crime porn clickbait seemed to have missed this story last week where the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child called NZ out on our ridiculously low age of criminal responsibility, which is 10!
The minimum age of criminal responsibility is the age at which tamariki (children) can be prosecuted for criminal offending. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this age was set at 10 years old in 1961. In 2019, the UN advised that all State parties should adopt a minimum age of at least 14 years old. Since then, the New Zealand Government has failed to take steps to get in line with this recommendation. Today, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child described the current minimum age of criminal responsibility in Aotearoa New Zealand as an “offence-based approach”, not a “child-centred approach”, and they asked the Government to advise what steps are being taken to bring the minimum age of criminal responsibility in line with UN standards.
Most of the civilised world accepts arresting children at 10 is appalling, in NZ we hate young people so much we want the bash first and cuddles second.
Media will shy away from the age of criminality debate because they make too much money from the ram raid stories and any suggestion that we should actually review our legal settings on children will prompt an outpouring of vitriol from the viewers who are whipped up by that coverage.
We are an easily led people and the sad underfunded social services that have been left threadbare can’t cope with the demands placed upon them.
It’s easier for us to punish the children who do bad than ensure they are free from the blight of poverty that curses them in the first place.
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Interesting Martyn. With some other stories especially sport, a fair chunk of our media seem obsessed with running items about what the rest of the world is saying about us in opinion pieces Maybe it’s about promoting those foreign media outlets and bodies like the UN don’t count.
Perhaps if and when National get into power they can give the media $55 million to keep the public blind.
No one’s done that before have they?
I watched a video this week about the dangers of raising children with screens (tablets, phones, tv, etc) & wonder if this is another contributing factor to our problems? Since society does not value many service jobs & poverty is the result among many families which either forces both parents to work or in single-parent families causes a variety of issues with the end result that children do not get enough face-to-face time with their parent(s) to develop the social skills required to be reliable members of society. This situation has existed for many decades so there are also parents who do not have the necessary skills to pass on. Like all problems, it seems to be that the greedy who have caused the problems escape censure while those who could make a case to be called the victims of faulty social policy get blamed for what is essentially their inevitable reaction to the situation they are in.
I agree that crime is wrong but policy that only punishes without treating the cause is not going to make a difference in changing people.
Bonnie. You’re right about children not getting enough face-to-face time with parents. I’d go further, and say that from a shockingly young age, babes in arms, and toddlers, get sparse amounts of at-home time.
Home is where they return for meals, bath, and bed, before being left next morning to be cared for by paid persons of variable quality, frequently immigrants, just as in aged care. Some infants are booked into pre-school from 8am- 6pm. Weekends may be their only decent amount of home time, and working parents can be rather busy themselves then. During the week, children see more of the paid outliers, than their own parents. Where there is only one parent, the pressures are infinitely worse. Kids don’t read now, unfortunately, but are directed to iPads to keep them quiet. If parents are shift workers, or working a couple of jobs, they may not all be home together at the same time.
This is what happens in the low wage economies espoused by privileged reprobates like Bill English, whereas in past times, one income could support a family, and even buy a home.
Every now and then some idiot blames parents for ram raids, bleating on about “ home life”, utterly unaware of what home life can be like for many children, and the politicians who do know, don’t care, or they would do something about it.
Reading your article uncritically, one could easily get the impression that these ram raiders have no agency at all and therefore aren’t to blame for the choices they freely make. It’s always someone else that is to blame whenever they drive their car through the shop frontage of some hardworking business owner and then steal the owners’ property.
If these “disenfranchised Māori and Pacifica youth” who regularly “attack business” do so out of poverty, then surely you’d expect poor White kids to act in a similar fashion. But you don’t see it. Therefore it can’t be poverty that is driving the criminality.
Do we want to see 10 year olds arrested? Not if we can avoid it. However, if the police find themselves arresting 10 year olds, then it’s hardly the fault of the police: something has already gone badly wrong with the 10 year olds’ parents.
So the young ram raiders are mainly Maori and Pacifika Nationalities ? Please provide evidence ?
That’s who Martyn said was doing it. Antoine was just critiquing his message.
It was an excellent point well made. If anyone has ‘disenfranchised’ these kids, it’s not the government or the cafe owner: It’s their drop-kick parents and themselves. Or should I say ‘parent’ in the singular form because I’d bet money most are in a solo mum situation.
2019 Now please remind me what government is in power to oversee this change is it to hard to say .
“It’s easier for us to punish the children who do bad than ensure they are free from the blight of poverty that curses them in the first place.”
Hell of a lot more expensive, too.
Dare I say, maybe English’s social investment approach was right?
Take the babies off the bad people and get them raised by good people. Better for the kids and better for society as a whole.
Heartbreaking for parents but they are responsible for their choices. Maybe it will cause some parents to try harder to break the mould and get their kids back and in doing so maybe reclaim their own lives from violent partners or drugs and booze.
Also, if less kids are in bad homes (and yes I know, sometimes its poor homes or non neuro typical kids or whatever) then more money is available to help those that need intervention and rehab.
Whatever’s happening now is not working.
I know if I was a kid and had a choice, all I would want is a safe and loving home with enough food to eat.
While “Take the babies off the bad people and get them raised by good people” sounds sensible any examination of history will show that some of those good people were not good after all. Not all of the parents thankfully but enough to show that caution is needed with any placements. It is an unfortunate reality that some people are not fit to be parents however this exists across all income levels yet it is only the poor that stand out because money talks in our society.
Fairpoint that I hadnt considered and it is true that some of the worst child abusers come from those in power traditionally.
The question needs to be asked : how did Indian immigrants acquire and finance the purchase of so many liquor outlets, dairies, and small grocery shops in some areas of Nz 80 % are Indian owned or controlled – to fund this billions of dollars are involved – where did it come from?
India is a rising great power, and a future superpower, based on their rapidly advancing (and extremely unequal) industrialised economy.
N.Z. is a country which allowed its economy to be decimated by foreign dumping, and is now largely agricultural and backward. Local people cannot afford to buy those businesses, and would be unwilling to survive on the low level of profits.
The economy is so weak that 7-Eleven gave up on the entire country. I.G.A. and Coles gave up also. Couche-Tard never bothered at all. Woolworths’ have a few Metro Convenience outlets.
artemis You forgot to mention child care facilities, aged care facilities, and petrol stations. Maybe shopping malls, security services.
It is not the hate of others that get these kids arrested, it is the fact that these kids are criminals. The thing is you can take these kids of the families for a few years, but if you don’t spend time to re-habilitate the family from which the child was uplifted, if you bring the child back after a few month/years you bring them to the same scenario that you uplifted them and you have achieved nothing. If you just give them a slab with a wet bus ticket on the hands as punishment they will laugh at you and do it again. So what are you gonna do? Nothing?
I agree with fantail, maybe we should bring these kids into family that can provide and will provide a stable home regardless of ethnicity and such. That would be a good outcome for the smaller ones. For the larger ones maybe build (hahahah, i know us building anything) a boarding school as if it were for the rich kids, with swimming pools, nice rooms, nice food, nice teachers and no way out somehwere in the middle of nowhere and have them grow out of their idiot phase there and get an education.
Something more needs to be done for these kids, because right now we have just about abandoned them to their future of misery for not wanting to appear ‘cruel’ and ‘unjust’ for somehow needing to punish a 10 + year old who steals cars and drives these into shops for funsies.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this sort of thing never happened when the country was still wealthy, and household incomes were still high.
State boarding schools, if they really were like a GPS grammar school, would be a very good idea in slum areas. Public military prep schools would be a better option for the ‘troublemakers’, and they would attract the other students who wish to enlist.
There used to be such a boarding school for naughty boys – Campbell Park School, North Otago. Unfortunately, in it’s time, it seemed to have some Abuse in Care cases…
Agree Brattie – they can holiday at home with family in the school holidays but return to a routine of unity, organisation and achievement. How many times have we seen people say – Thank goodness I went in the Army or the T.A’s. “It helped me focus and take responsibility for myself”. And many also say, they had a great time as well.
I think its really unfortunate that almost all the Maori Boarding schools have gone. They used to turn out some great future New Zealanders – Politicians, Lawyers etc.
Boarding schools, quasi military schools dont have to be awful but they do need to be staffed by carefully vetted people with a history of success with young people.