The Government has continued its law-and-order drive but the details of exactly how it will address long-term systemic problems at youth justice residences is unclear, writes political editor Jo Moir
Analysis: Having the right staff with the skills to deal with the most challenging teenagers in youth residences is something all political parties agree needs sorting, yet solutions are few and far between.
Minister for Children Kelvin Davis told Newsroom on Tuesday he’s not happy with the recruitment or training currently on offer for staff in the country’s youth justice residences.
“Training’s been increased to six weeks, and I still don’t think that’s enough,” he said.
Previously staff had been put on the job with as little as two weeks' preparation for what they were about to encounter.
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Davis told Newsroom the Mike Bush review “will get to the bottom” of long-standing training and recruitment issues within Oranga Tamariki, which runs the youth residences.
That review was commissioned by Oranga Tamariki in June to assess the residences after several allegations involving staff who allegedly acted inappropriately towards youth in their care.
It’s expected to take two months, so it will be late next month before it’s released publicly.
But it’s not only the Government pinning its hopes on it being the silver bullet for how best to recruit, instruct, and incentivise the best people to work in these residences.
National’s police spokesperson Mark Mitchell told Newsroom he’d also be looking to that review for how to deal with the systemic issues at Oranga Tamariki.
“We’ve got a Mike Bush review that should have been done two or three years ago.
“That’s going to show us Oranga Tamariki has deeply-entrenched issues,” he said.
Asked by Newsroom what those specific issues were, Mitchell pointed to the training of staff and supervisors to ensure there are “people with the right qualifications and backgrounds to rehabilitate these youths before they come back out into the community”.
Mitchell told Newsroom it would take being in government to have the resources and advisors to formulate how best to tackle that issue.
Davis pointed to the Bush review as holding the answers and loosely suggested a recruitment campaign like the big drive done by Corrections might also help. At the same time, he was hesitant to align the skills required in youth justice residences with that of adult prisons.
As to whether 12 year olds, who are currently eligible for youth justice residences, may also end up in secure high-needs units with 17 year olds in the future is a question Davis never quite answered on Tuesday.
It’s 17 year olds in youth facilities who Davis and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins were particularly targeting when they announced on Tuesday that the Government would build two new high-needs justice facilities for the most serious offenders.
The Act Party solution is to put 17 year olds back in prison with adults, after a legislation change put them into Oranga Tamariki’s care in 2019.
National has already announced its plan to put some 15 to 17 year olds into youth offender military academies – boot camps – and says there’s no need to build high-needs units because the current facilities should be running well enough to cater for those young offenders.
Meanwhile, the Green Party co-leaders refused to say whether they felt uncomfortable with the tougher-on-crime approach Hipkins is rolling out this week, despite it going completely against their own party’s rehabilitative approach and desire to not see any more youth residences built.
Te Pāti Māori didn’t show up to provide a view despite it being the first sitting day of Parliament in two weeks.
The high-needs units announced by Davis and Hipkins were part of a suite of changes that also included giving staff the ability to search anyone coming into the residences for contraband and improving and funding more family group conferences to try prevent reoffending in the first place.
Alongside that, Davis said work was already underway to fix some of the “flaws” within the youth residences that have allowed teenagers to climb on the roof in recent weeks, putting both themselves and staff at risk.
As to whether 12 year olds, who are currently eligible for youth justice residences, may also end up in secure high-needs units with 17 year olds in the future is a question Davis never quite answered on Tuesday.
While it’s his preference for 17 and 18 year olds and possibly some 16 year olds to be the focus of the new units in Christchurch and Auckland, he said an assessment would have to be done, and the offending and behaviour of some younger teens may mean they end up there as well.
That’s because the “model of care” that will provide the basis of how these new units operate is yet to be designed.
Davis said it was also his preference that the new facilities had full-time mental health staff, but he couldn’t say whether that would be the case until the model of care was drawn up.
Hipkins pushed back on the lack of detail around how the units would run, who they’d cater for, and costings, saying media would accuse him of a “secret agenda” if his Government had done any of the specific planning before the policy had been publicly announced.
Tuesday’s announcements followed a clampdown on youth crime on Monday by Hipkins that would make posting content online an aggravating factor in sentencing and punish any adults caught coercing youth into committing crime.
A third tranche of changes focused on youth justice is still to come as Hipkins tries to regain the narrative on law and order that has been totally dominated by National and Act since he became Prime Minister.
The push into the centre with a tougher-on-crime approach is expected to continue with Wednesday's announcement.
