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Sensible Sentencing NZ Submission on Youth Justice to the Law and Order Select Committee – Youth Parliament 2007

(Date : July 2007)

What should be the focus of New Zealand's Youth Justice System?

What should be the focus of New Zealand's Youth Justice System?
Answer: The goal should be exactly the same for every part of the criminal justice system - Minimising crime to protect innocent victims.

Sensible Sentencing:

• Presents a representative selection of relevant findings, headlines and reports from the past few years;
• Urges an end to the current experiment with offender centred justice for all parts of the system.
• Urges that the Police, and Court treat all offenders alike, with only the prison and probation systems treating youth offenders differently to reduce the risks of bullying and exploitation by more hardened thugs.

What’s happened (contrasted with the well meaning theory) - a selection

Re-offending

Emerging from the youth justice system, over 90% of criminals under 20 re-offend. Those released from prison aged under 20 have 96.5% reoffending rates. 60% are reconvicted of an offence within 26 weeks. 71% are re-imprisoned within 5 years. Source: Ministry of Justice 2003

Young Offenders More Ferocious

Ministry of Social Development 2006 analysis of custody placements found that while there had been growth in the young person population, overall Police apprehensions had decreased 11% over 1998/2006 on a per 10,000 of population basis. Apprehensions for violent offending rose by 36.4% over the previous 8 years and charges for violent offending increased by 57.6% between 2000 and 2005. “This suggests it is the ferocity, not the frequency of offending which is changing,” said the report.

The NZ Crime and Safety Survey 2006 – April 2007

Ministry of Justice Victimisation surveys are the “gold standard” in crime measurement. Typically people report only a third or less of the offences against them, and police record only a proportion of what is reported. This survey finds that New Zealanders report to Police around one third of assaults, one fifth of threats and one in ten sexual offences. Even of serious offences, fewer than half are reported. Comparing the victimisation survey with Police figures suggest that Police record only 12% of assaults said to be known to them, Thus the NZCASS indication of 720,000 assaults in 2005 comes down to 32,000 recorded by the Police, of the 260,000 were said to have been reported. For robbery and theft from the person the equivalents are 49,000 incidents of which 11,000 are reported to the Police and only 4,000 recorded. Of 330,000 burglaries according to the survey, 154,000 are reported and 38,000 recorded.

Reporting of crime to the Police seems to be lower in New Zealand than in comparable countries like Britain.

NZCASS estimates of the number of offences in 2005 (page 30)

Per 100 households
Burglary- 21.2, theft from a dwelling – 4.3, other household thefts – 1.8 Total 27.3% of households. Household vandalism – 15%. Thefts of and from vehicles – 9.4, vehicle vandalism – 8.9, Total 18.3%
All household offences – 60.2% in one year.

Per 100 adults

Assaults and threats (pages 35 to 37)

Sexual – 6.4, Assaults – 22 (about half involving injury), Threats – 18.4, Robbery – 0.7 Total - 47.5, making up nearly half the victimisations measured.

Personal property (non household and car) Thefts from the person – 0.8, Thefts of personal property – 4.1, vandalism to personal property – 3.8 Total – 8.7.

Assaults and threats are a much higher proportion of total crime in New Zealand than has been measured in comparable surveys elsewhere...

Increases in crime (pages 38 to 42)

There is argument over whether surveys are a true measure of your risk of being a crime victim. There is much less argument about what they tell us about trends. The 2006 survey results show seem to show shockingly higher crime risks in 2005 compared with 2000, for all categories of offence except bicycle theft, robbery and theft from the person. An increase of nearly 50% in the likelihood of both assault and threat is truly astonishing. The survey authors advance several reasons why that apparent difference might not be significant. But they could not explain away most of the increase in household (burglary, vandalism etc) risk between 2000 and 2005, from 34 per 100 households to 44 per 100 households.

Victimisation risk (pages 49 to 60)

While the average New Zealander has a 39% risk of being a crime victim each year (based on the NZCASS survey), being a student, or aged between 15 and 24, or single or flatting, all increase that victimisation risk by more than 50%. Old people, couples with no children and house owning single people were at low risk. Students and flatters were more than twice as likely to suffer some crimes, like car theft and other vehicle crime. As you would expect, young woman are between three and four times more likely to suffer a sexual offence, than older women.

Police data 2005.

Officials don’t know how much youth crime there is. Incomplete Police data says that 14 to 16 year olds recorded close to 34,000 offences requiring police intervention in 2004. About 2000 were formally processed through the youth court and there were around 7000 family group conferences related to the offences in that period

A now dated United Nations sponsored international study on crime which NZ participated in showed out of 70 countries New Zealand had:

• The highest rate of reported crime;
• The fifth highest rate of assaults;
• The fourth highest rate of car thefts;
• The fourth highest rate of burglaries;
• The second rate of criminal convictions.
• The third highest rate of drug offences
• But was only 41th in terms of the rate of imprisonment.

NZ had the fourth-lowest imprisonment rate per 1000 convictions out of 34 countries- meaning convicted criminals in NZ were likely to spend the least time in jail of any country except Finland, the United Kingdom and Denmark.

US comparisons

Many criminologists argue that increasing youth crime is inevitable when the number of young people is growing rapidly. Young people as a proportion of our population are decreasing. Adding doubt to that theory, the US has had a major reduction in serious youth offending over the same period that ours has rocketed. (from Washington Post article)

In the US crime declined by more than a third in every category over a 10 year period, roughly coinciding with President Clinton’s criminal justice reforms.

Violent youth crime in the US is down more than adult crime at a time when their youth population grew from 26 million to 34 million. In New Zealand over the same 10 years our violent youth crime nearly doubled.

End the loopy experiment.

Until around thirty years ago the main object of the criminal justice system was to catch offenders quickly enough, and to punish them firmly enough, to ensure that only a few incorrigbles thought it would be worth committing crime. In other words, deterrence was the focus.

By the early 1980s well meaning reformers had gained ascendancy. They theorise that crime is abnormal. To them it is a form of mental sickness that can be cured if the community can just be nice enough for long enough to the unfortunate people drawn to crime. The main features of our separate Youth Justice system now reflect that theory.

The whole system is now focussed around what the justice system insiders (officials, lawyers, judges, social workers) call the “criminogenic needs” of offenders. The entire criminal justice than has become driven by the reoffending rate instead of the offending rate. In practice that means the offender’s interests rule.

Unfortunately practical studies around the world tell a consistent story – rehabilitation happens, but it is largely spontaneous, and can not be attributed to programs or treatment differences.

When the focus is the criminal instead of the victim the system is obsessed by “curing” criminals. It would be nice if the urge to cheat, steal, bully, bash, rob, rape, and take without contributing was a sickness. But sadly there is no evidence that most offenders are "sick” or that they want to be cured, or that any program can ‘cure’ them.

That loopy experiment has failed. It should be abandoned for all parts of the system.

End the separate Youth Justice system

It is patronising, wrong in principle, and ineffective to have a separate system for "youth”. The law should treat equally all offenders old enough to understand what they are doing. Accordingly:

• A separate system for children is defensible, but not for young adults
• There may be reason for separate prisons and training programs to keep teenagers away from hardened criminals, but in every other respect the separate youth justice experiment should be ended.

It is wrong to treat young adults as if they were children. People treated like children act like spoilt and selfish children. They make life a misery for everyone, and particularly other “children”. But their adult size and capacity means the resulting harm is no childish matter.

Sensible Sentencing believes the catastrophic results of our youth justice system speak for themselves.

Some of the justice insiders will argue otherwise. Family group conferencing has been trumpeted as world beating. Its designers have written academic papers. But all the self-congratulation has been about noble intentions. No-one wants to talk about the outcome. Smug do-gooders want to strut at international conferences, academics and bureaucrats want to finish their careers without being exposed as frauds, politicians are desperate to ensure that the voters don’t recognise the disaster.

The failure is not surprising. The essential differences between the ordinary system and youth justice are:

• Lame excuses are rewarded. Evidence is not presented, or challenged in formal proceedings. Formal charges are rare (one in seven apprehensions result in a charge). Processes meant to give a second chance now give up to 20 ‘second’ chances.
• Offenders are treated as if they can't think for themselves, as if they don't really know the hurt they are causing.
• “Care-givers” who don’t care, parents who’ve been the model for the offending are solemnly treated by a phalanx of social workers, and resentful Police as if they were to be believed, and worthy of respect. Resulting agreements are not enforced. The only lesson the young person can draw is that the system is a sucker.
• Savage secrecy laws governing the Youth Court, turn upside down the wisdom of customary law world wide. Shame is the main mechanism that makes formal legal processes unnecessary in most cultures. Our youth justice system instead tells offenders and their rotten families that whatever they do, it will be kept secret, that they need not feel shame,
• Suppressing the record (effectively wiping it clean) on reaching adulthood assures young offenders that there will be no long-term consequences. This is precisely the worst time to send that message. They are encouraged to offend while patterns are being established. The research shows that a criminal life style is almost impossible to break once it is formed.

After 30 years of goofy theory, serious crime by young people is rocketing. Young people are most at risk of being the victims.

Our separate youth Justice system:

• does not deliver justice for victims
• does not deter (does not send the message that crime will not pay)
• does not reduce reoffending
• frustrates dedicated police
• reduces public trust in Justice
• is expensive and confusing.

The biggest changes should be made in entry-level crime. It’s too late once people have a pattern of offending. What should be done is simple.

Sensible Sentencing will explain that at the hearing. We will not be urging longer sentences or "lock em up and throw away the key".