05.06.04
AGENDA
JUNE 5
JUDGE ANDREW BECROFT
Interviewed by SIMON DALLOW
This transcript is copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used provided acknowledgement is given to Agenda and TVOne.
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It should be checked against a tape of the programme to ensure complete accuracy.
PART 1
SIMON
Last week three members of the Warriors development squad aged 15 and 16 at the time were convicted after kicking and beating one's ex girlfriend to make her miscarry. The sentencing judge called their action unacceptable in a civilised society and ordered they be gaoled for 15 to 18 months. The story shocked and rocked many with the boys enjoying strong testimonials in court including one from the renowned coach, Frank Endicott. The whole thing once again provoke the widespread perception that youth offending is spiralling out of control, and I spoke yesterday with the man who sentenced the three youths, Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft and I began by asking him just who the Youth Court deals with.
JUDGE BECROFT
The Youth Court deals with 14, 15 and 16 year olds, those who offend between 10 and 14 are dealt with in the Family Court on the basis that their offending is seen primarily as a function of a problem in the family. So it's 10 to 13 within the Family Court, they're called children, 14 to 16 in the Youth Court. Nobody can be charged with an offence at law in the Youth Court if they're under 14 unless it's murder or manslaughter, so murder and manslaughter start from 10, everything else aged 14.
SIMON
Within that system who's open to imprisonment?
JUDGE BECROFT
Everyone charged with murder and manslaughter from age 10 upwards, everybody aged 14 and upwards who's charged with an imprisonable offence, but they can only be imprisoned if they're convicted and transferred to the District or High Court for sentence.
SIMON
How valid is this somewhat widespread perception that youth offending is escalating?
JUDGE BECROFT
It's not valid, the simple reality is, is that youth offending has been remarkably stable for the last ten years, that is an unknown, it's a hushed up, it's a misunderstood fact but there's been relative stability. Sure there have been some very concerning and tragic probably black days in youth offending in New Zealand and they have rightly shocked the public, but thankfully they are the exception rather than the norm, and I guess one would need to say that for the last 15 to 20 years there have been those sorts of cases in the past. We shouldn’t lose our sense of shock I guess and outrage at that sort of serious offending but it unfortunately distorts the real picture which as I say is one of relative stability and I guess you could say there's room for cautious optimism. Things are fundamentally sound it seems to me.
SIMON
So the numbers aren’t going then, what about the profile of offending, are offenders starting younger are the serious of the crimes is that increasing?
JUDGE BECROFT
I think all that I've said should be said subject to this one thing, it is a concern that violent offending seems to be starting earlier and it's more severe, so perhaps what a 17 year old might have done with a hunk of 4x2 now a 14 year old may be doing with an imitation firearm. These are world wide trends they're evident in the States they're certainly evident in Australia, as night follows day they will probably become more pronounced in New Zealand, so that is an area of real concern, but it's a very small group but it's a concerning group.
SIMON
While the numbers are stable are the statistics consistent throughout the country are there regional variations?
JUDGE BECROFT
Huge regional variations, you can't say about New Zealand this is the picture about youth offending, in fact there are some areas where youth offending is declining quite markedly, and other areas where it's increasing. The best approach to youth offending is community based regional local solutions, where it works well where the system works well youth crime really is very much under control.
SIMON
What is the ethnic composition of this, we're often confronted with statistics that suggest that Maori and Pacific Islanders are over represented, is that valid?
JUDGE BECROFT
It is, in all areas of New Zealand life and all the negative measurement, prison, education, health and youth offending, Maori are regrettably much over represented. In youth offending about 50% of youth offenders in New Zealand are Maori, about 20% of the population 14 to 16 year olds are Maori, it is of course a major concern, it's one of the real challenges that faces our youth justice system.
SIMON
What is the level of repeat offending like, I mean how much recidivism do we have?
JUDGE BECROFT
Again to answer that question it just perhaps is important to differentiate between the two types of offending, we talk about an 80/20 rule in youth offending. Indeed in many areas of life there's an 80/20 rule, I'm told that 80% of real estate sell 20% of the houses, 80% of fishermen catch 20% of the fish, 80% of offenders commit 20% of the offences, that’s one group. It's actually a group that start offending as teenagers, end offending as teenager, it's par to boundary pushing, maturation, limit testing, if there are solid and quick interventions for that group all the research tells us that the repeat offending rate is quite low.
SIMON
What about the hard core offenders?
JUDGE BECROFT
That’s a much more difficult question, they are 5 to 15% of offenders, they might make up 60% of the offences all around the country. If you went to new Plymouth, if you went to Kaikoura, if you went to Dannevirke, if you went to Invercargill and you asked health, education, youth aid, child youth and family services, if you asked them who are your 20 families or 20 young people cause you the most trouble they'd all give the same people pretty much, that small group has a hugely disproportionate effect on its community. As I say it's about 5 to 15% of all offenders, that group is a problematic group, it's a concerning group for every western country, there's no magic bullet, it's fair to say that repeat offending for that group is far more significant than for the much larger group of say 80 percenters who commit a relatively small amount of the offences.
SIMON
Is there a lack of a value system for these people, I mean do they have no moral foundation is that part of the problem?
JUDGE BECROFT
Oh that’s one small part of the problem but it's perhaps even more helpful to say well what do we know about this 5 to 15%, what is the common picture, what is the common stereotype as it were and we have some pretty clear information as to what characterises that group.
SIMON
What does characterise it?
JUDGE BECROFT
Well there's at least six factors, 85% are male, it's predominantly a young man's problem. Someone riley observed that if you really wanted to reduce youth offending you would eliminate the y chromosome from the gene pool. That’s not to say that the 15% of young women who offend aren’t a difficult group, they are in some ways they're a very difficult and problematic group but essentially 85% of those serious offenders are male, 50% are Maori, about 80% are drug and or alcohol addicts usually both, and addicts is what they are. About 80% aren’t at school, aren’t engaged at school. Most in fact technically aren’t truants because they aren’t enrolled at a school to be a truant from. Most lack a positive male role model. Boys of the 14, 15, 16 age group, the white water rafting years, they seek out male role models like heat seeking missiles, the only issue is what sort of male role model is it, is it an antisocial peer who's committed 30 burglaries, is it the leader of the local gang, or is it a sports coach, a community leader, Bible class teacher, that sort of thing. It's a real issue, so many of the young men I see in the Youth Court simply don’t have a meaningful relationship with their Dad who's long gone if they ever knew him, or any positive male role model figure, and I guess the last characteristic is that a great proportion have a serious psychological conduct disorder, disorder that was evident from usually age 3, 4, 5 and 6 if not earlier, sometimes serious psychiatric issues. So that is the profile of this serious group the group that almost commits the majority of crimes and is almost always in the Youth Court because one very good thing about our youth justice system is that 80% of offences are dealt with outside the system, dealt with by the Police, dealt within the community, young offenders are held to account but they're not held to account by charging them and it's a good system it works well, but that small group that I've just talked about, that group, they are really young boys in men's bodies.
SIMON
What numbers are we talking about here, how many young offenders are we talking about this hard core group?
JUDGE BECROFT
That hard core group, well we know that about four to five thousand come to the Youth Court each year, we're probably talking between one to four thousand depending on your measurement, at it's hard end, it's probably about 1,000 to 15,000.
SIMON
What is the most important thing we need to do as a nation, what is the first step we should take to address this?
JUDGE BECROFT
We're taking some good steps at the moment, there's been a recent ministerial task force on youth offending. The first point that made is that we need to more accurately identify this small group of problematic offenders, early identification is the key. When we've got that early identification then we need to deliver programmes that work, and there's a lot of good research about what works, but as a country I think we need to on the one hand realise that the majority of youth offending is really boundary pushing, maturation, limit testing, it's the sort of thing that anybody with teenagers in the family would know about ever day and we just need to have a sense of proportion I think about that sort of offending, but what we do need to take terribly seriously is that 5 to 15% and I think we need to probably start much earlier, much more comprehensively and there's more that we could do even at the 14, 15, 16 age group. I guess it's fair to say the Youth Court is the ultimate ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, there's a lot we can do, Youth Court does and will hold young offenders to account, but we could do it so much better if we did it so much earlier it would be so much cheaper and it would everybody so much more effective.
PART 2
SIMON
Welcome back to Agenda. In the second part of my interview yesterday with Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft I asked him how effective has the two year old youth offending strategy proven to be.
JUDGE BECROFT
We have 30 youth offending teams in each major region throughout the country, those teams are made up of all the key agencies, they talk they co-operate. One thing I've found in being in this job quite new to Wellington is what's often called a silo mentality, departments and agencies work separately from each other. I think in youth offending we're learning very quickly the benefits of information sharing, the collaboratively collegial approach and let's not forget it's not just government departments it's really a community based solution, and that’s where I think some real strides are being made at the moment.
SIMON
You talk about community basis but there does seem to be a lack of cohesion among the agencies, there are a lot of localised programmes around the country the boot camp style programme addressing the problem of repeat offenders, what practical initiatives are binding this together nationally?
JUDGE BECROFT
Well there's two things I can say about that, first of all we know more and more about what the good programmes are and one thing we do know is that boot camps aren’t good programmes, they don’t work, they capture the public imagination but they're a spectacular failure in the statistics and they have between 90 to 100% reoffending rate, so the sort of thing we need to do locally is to use the good information that we have nationally to support the programmes that work. There's a programme for instance in Mangere that deals entirely and exclusively with this 5 to 15% and uses the best of international research, there's six weeks at Waiouru military base, it's concentrated emotional physical spiritual challenge, but it's supported then by a year's worth of mentoring follow up and training. Now those sorts of programmes are gradually developing around the country and the new National Youth Justice Leadership Group has those good programmes very much in their sights, they're trying very hard to winnow and weed out those programmes that look good but don’t cut the mustard and they're working very hard to co-ordinate what's going on nationally. I mean your point is very well made, we could do with much better co-ordination but we've improved a lot from where it was.
SIMON
What's your response to the Sensible Sentencing Trust's call for the minimum age for criminal prosecution to be removed, is that practical?
JUDGE BECROFT
That’s always been an area of legitimate and proper public debate, I'd be reluctant as a judge to stray too far into that issue which is really a matter for the politicians, but I'd say this, we would need to be very sure that our system at the moment that deals with 10 to 13 years olds in the Family Court isn't working, before we chucked it out, and we'd have to say well there's something about child offending that is causing us concern, in fact child offending is quite stable. The child offending system we have is a good system but I think it's badly misunderstood and it's under resourced. So I think they are important factors to consider in the debate.
SIMON
Is it sufficiently co-ordinated?
JUDGE BECROFT
…but they can only be imprisoned if they're convicted and transferred to the District or High Court for sentence.
SIMON
How valid is this somewhat widespread perception that youth offending is escalating?
JUDGE BECROFT
It's not valid, the simple reality is, is that youth offending has been remarkably stable for the last ten years, that is an unknown, it's a hushed up, it's a misunderstood fact but there's been relative stability. Sure there have been some very concerning and tragic probably black days in youth offending in New Zealand and they have rightly shocked the public, but thankfully they are the exception rather than the norm, and I guess one would need to say that for the last 15 to 20 years there have been those sorts of cases in the past. We shouldn’t lose our sense of shock I guess and outrage at that sort of serious offending but it unfortunately distorts the real picture which as I say is one of relative stability and I guess you could say there's room for cautious optimism. Things are fundamentally sound it seems to me.
SIMON
So the numbers aren’t going then, what about the profile of offending, are offenders starting younger are the serious of the crimes is that increasing?
JUDGE BECROFT
I think all that I've said should be said subject to this one thing, it is a concern that violent offending seems to be starting earlier and it's more severe, so perhaps what a 17 year old might have done with a hunk of 4x2 now a 14 year old may be doing with an imitation firearm. These are world wide trends they're evident in the States they're certainly evident in Australia, as night follows day they will probably become more pronounced in New Zealand, so that is an area of real concern, but it's a very small group but it's a concerning group.
SIMON
While the numbers are stable are the statistics consistent throughout the country are there regional variations?
JUDGE BECROFT
Huge regional variations, you can't say about New Zealand this is the picture about youth offending, in fact there are some areas where youth offending is declining quite markedly, and other areas where it's increasing. The best approach to youth offending is community based regional local solutions, where it works well where the system works well youth crime really is very much under control.
SIMON
What is the ethnic composition of this, we're often confronted with statistics that suggest that Maori and Pacific Islanders are over represented, is that valid?
JUDGE BECROFT
It is, in all areas of New Zealand life and all the negative measurement, prison, education, health and youth offending, Maori are regrettably much over represented. In youth offending about 50% of youth offenders in New Zealand are Maori, about 20% of the population 14 to 16 year olds are Maori, it is of course a major concern, it's one of the real challenges that faces our youth justice system.
SIMON
What is the level of repeat offending like, I mean how much recidivism do we have?
JUDGE BECROFT
No it's not, we need to do much better with child offenders, much better. People say the Youth Court is the community's last best shot, well it is. The second to last best shot is the Family Court dealing with child offenders, now that work outside of court in terms of programmes and treatment for 10, 11, 12 and 13 years olds, secure facilities for that group, that needs to be worked on much better.
SIMON
Do we have adequate secure residential facilities?
JUDGE BECROFT
Across the board? No.
SIMON
Where are we lacking?
JUDGE BECROFT
We are lacking because we simply suffer from a lack of bed space.
SIMON
Is that financial or a lack of political will?
JUDGE BECROFT
It's not lack of political will, we have I guess for the last eight years or so since about 96 I think there's been a lack of forward policy planning, we're now inheriting the problem. Those in control now are well aware of the problem, our levels of remands in Police cells which is where young people go if they don’t have room in a residence, those Police cell remand levels are quite simply unacceptable even scandalous. We had nearly five to six hundred young people last year remanded in Police cells for up to 1800 nights, that is unacceptable. We had young people having 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 nights in a Police cell, poor hygiene facilities, poor meals, surviving on McDonald's, solitary confinement, round the clock monitoring for suicide risk and the like, lack of family visitation, it's just not good enough, but everyone knows it's not, we've just gotta work quickly now to get a few more residences built and the irony is, everybody in the community says yes for this small group we need more secure facilities, we only need about another 10 to 20 perhaps 30 beds, everyone agrees but no one wants it in their own back garden, you go to CYFS they say Judge we're ready willing and able to build these facilities just tell us where because no one wants it close to them, but everybody says we need them.
SIMON
You mentioned before the need for early intervention and to tackle truancy, how vital is the tackling of truancy now, where I think it was what the 1992 Select Committee that recommended we have a national database, where are we with that.
JUDGE BECROFT
Well we don’t have a national database, that would be a useful first start but it would do no more than identify that perhaps two to four thousand young people who are lost to the system, and they are lost to the system, they're drifting, if we had that database we could target them. I guess our real concern is that while not every such person offends, all offenders come from that group. We have about 300,000 young people at secondary school, the group we're talking about is about one percent of that group - small problem for the Ministry – I tell you this it's all of our problem in the Youth Court, that group is the entire problem in the Youth Court and we need to I think make the links between that small group and non school attendance, it's a terribly important protective factor against offending. You could almost go sofaras to say that every difficult young person kept at school is one less potential career criminal, it's that important and just about that simple.
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