Youth Crime in New Zealand: This Election Year All Parties Need to State their Policy.

Quoting from Chris Lynch's piece:

A public meeting will be held in Burwood tonight to address residents’ concerns over increasing crime.

A local told Chris Lynch Media she had her Toyota Aqua stolen at 12.44am last Thursday night despite having security cameras & lights.

“We have footage of one of the kids sneaking around the other side of the car so he was hidden from the camera to break a window.”

At least 15 other cars were broken into on the same night.

The resident said “It's been a massive problem since November last year.”

”I’m part of Burwood and Aranui groups and every single day there are multiple break-ins and car thefts.”

She said four police cars caught the perpetrators who stole her car an hour later, after a chasing them and using road spikes on Bassett Street so they were forced to stop.

The offenders were 11 and 14 and known to the police and live in New Brighton.

And then this from Twitter:

Which is the point of my header tweet: there being no legal consequences for youth is not working.

My only point for this post is what are political party - all parties - policies in this specific area coming up to the general election October 14th? I think it’s an important question, ask it wherever you get a chance.

I have no doubt my own solutions won’t feature, namely:

1. Short term, borstals. There is a growing hardened group of these youth who are simply anarchists thumbing their noses at the system and causing mayhem. The ability to put the worst into youth correctional facilities first gets them away from the public who don’t deserve the psychological and physical harm from them, nor the cost of replacing or repairing the property stolen and vandalised, and secondly perhaps allows attempts at rehabilitation (but the public remains my primary concern, the victim).

2. Long term, we have to attack the source of the problem: dysfunctional families created by generations of welfare dependency.

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