Youth crime needs to be addressed with better parenting and support for parents, and the problems worked on by the wider community, says Sir Graham Lowe and a city councillor.
Former rugby league coach Sir Graham Lowe Photo: Photosport
Hamilton City Councillor Mark Bunting told Morning Report he's thought of little else since he heard a group of children broke into a Hamilton mall to steal toys in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The four children were aged between seven and twelve years old, and were caught by police on the top level of the Chartwell Shopping Centre, with one child falling from that level, Bunting said.
Hamilton Councillor concerned by youth crime
It follows a spate of youth crime further north in Auckland, including a 12-year-old driving a getaway vehicle after a dairy robbery in Grey Lynn on Sunday, and twenty teenagers brazenly ram raided a mall in east Auckland.
Bunting said poverty was a key factor in poor parenting and bad environments some young people were growing up in, and the community needed to take a big picture look at the problems and how to help.
League legend turned youth advocate Sir Graham Lowe helps run education programmes in prisons and agrees the problems behind youth crime are in the home. But he doesn't accept poverty as an excuse for not raising a child well.
'What they need is love and attention from their parents' - Sir Graham Lowe
"How.. can a seven or nine-year-old kid be out [at 1am] doing this? It doesn't matter what circumstances you are in here in New Zealand you are able to deliver values of what is right and what is wrong. That is what is part of the responsibility of being a parent.
"I know you see some of these young people doing things and the comment from many is 'they just need a good kick in the pants', well they don't need a good kick in the pants - what they need is love and attention from their parents.
"I can just imagine ... they aren't getting the correct messaging from parents, and too many of them - nothing at all from dad."
Sir Graham said the fact the kids were out in the early hours of the morning at all is a concern.
"Just the [basic] human side of being a parent wouldn't let you do that. I think we hide behind the banner of poverty, which I absolutely accept is at terrible levels here in this country, but that still does not excuse for not at least showing values for a child ... that's your responsibly as a parent.
Bunting said the incidents show there are systemic problems in the community that need to be acted on.
Mark Bunting Photo: NZ Parking Association
"They say it takes a village to raise a child and quite frankly I think the village has let itself down in this case, where were we? Instead of tsk tsking and tut tutting and saying the police should have been there... we should actually be thinking 'what can we do as a community?'
There had been a widespread community reaction, and social media comments include concern, anger and suspicion, Bunting said. He had heard of residents living in wealthy streets taking video of people walking through the neighbourhood wearing hoodies.
"People don't know what to do, but they want to do something. That energy is there, but they're coming from a place of fear at the moment, instead of a place love.
"Unfortunately that involves coming out of a house with a bat or a gun - it's going to come to that unless we energise the community and put some proper preventative measures in."
"But the first thing's got to be that our attitude towards these kids these tamariki's got to change. Rather than seeing dangerous little street kids, we've got to see kids that perhaps we are somewhat responsible for and we can help."
He said consultation is planned planned with police, iwi and the crime unit at Waikato University to understand the patterns behind the crime as well as the big picture, and what can be done.
But Bunting said poverty was a driver of wider problems in the environments young offenders are steeped in.
"It's one step back... people really need to see the conditions some of these kids are living in. Some of them, they don't know where they are going to be each night. There's a big divide between the wealthy and the not wealthy.
"The parents are absent, the parents are gone, they don't even want to feed these kids some of the time."
That hostile environment meant young people had little resistance to the attractions of being led astray.
"It's the rush, and these kids see each other doing it on video and they're trying to outdo them."
Bunting said jobs provided by Tainui's Ruakura 'superhub' development is one project he hopes will help provide opportunities and a sense of worth to those struggling, and will have a positive flow down affect to young people and families. But intergenerational dysfunction won't be fixed overnight.
"I'm calling on our community to say 'hey, what can you give, what can you do to help?
"Even if it is just saying gidday to one of these kids, even if it is saying 'can I get you a feed?', or asking them about their day, rather than driving past with your window shut afraid they're going to carjack you."