Youth Offending: Putting the Headlines in Context

There are a number of children running about the streets ... without the control of parents. If the Government does not take them in hand ... they will become ... members of a criminal class.

"EACH generation unfavourably compares the young people today with previous 'golden ages,'" Victoria University of Wellington Institute of Criminology lecturer Gabrielle Maxwell told delegates at the first youth advocates' workshop, held in Wellington in July.

Every so often, youth crime was used to signal the moral breakdown of society and lack of parental discipline or as a vehicle to say that courts and police had insufficient powers to control young people.

However, it was important for professionals dealing with youth crime to put headlines and stories of increasing and out-of control youth crime in context. Dr Maxwell used statistics and research from various sources to illustrate that the pattern of youth offending has remained constant over at least the past 10 years. Children and young people are responsible for about 22% of total offending. Three-quarters of youth offending involved dishonesty or property damage and less than 10% involved violence.

Popular beliefs about youth crime - that it was serious, rapidly increasing and out of control - did not match the experience of those working with young offenders. Most people did something which broke the law while they were growing up, Dr Maxwell said. But few young people ever come into contact with the police and those that did usually had one experience only. For example, only 2.4% of young people appeared in the Youth Court in 1996 (Spiers 1998).

Dr Maxwell used police statistics on cleared offences in her presentation, as they were the best in terms of inclusiveness and the only statistics available which provided information on the age of the offender. However, the figures were not an accurate representation of the number of offences actually committed, as not all offences were reported to the police, let alone cleared by them. Also, more than one offence may have been committed by a particular offender. The offenders responsible for the cleared offences may not have been convicted in a court, in some cases they were not charged and in many cases they were simply warned or diverted or referred for a family group conference.

How many offend?

A total of 43,504 offences cleared by the police in 1997/98 were attributed to juveniles - 22% of the total number of cleared offences. A paper prepared for the police by Schollum (1999) suggested that these 43,504 offences represent a total of 14,333 offenders under the age of 17 years or 1.5% of the total population under 17. The proportion of offenders aged between 14 and 16 is higher (5.5%).

Seriousness of offences

Dr Maxwell showed that, compared with adults, a higher proportion of young people are responsible for dishonesty and property offences and a lower proportion are involved in other offences such as violence, sex offences and drug offences.

Dishonesty offences in 1997/98 accounted for 55% of youth crime. Most of the rest of the offences involved abuse or damage to property or drugs and anti-social offences. Violence accounted for 9.7% of youth crime and sexual offences made up less than 0.5%.

Dr Maxwell and Alison Morris collected data on 462 young offenders who came to police attention in five districts over a period of three months in 1990/91. They found:

• 45% committed offences of minimum seriousness (mostly property and dishonesty offences involving goods of less than $100 value);
• 40% involved offences of medium seriousness such as car conversion and burglary;
• only 5% involved serious offences of violence or property value; and
• 80% of cases involved only one offence.

More recently, there had been claims that the number of serious offences committed by 10-13 year olds was on the rise. Dr Maxwell highlighted a child offenders study published in 1995 (Maxwell and Robertson) which showed that only 10 of the 109 children nominated by police as serious recidivist offenders committed offences that could be classified as of "maximum seriousness". Four children were involved in arson, five in violence towards other children and one committed a sexual offence.

More recent information with this level of detail was not available, however Dr Maxwell pointed out that the increase in all violent and sexual offences attributed to children aged 10-13 years was small - from 8.4% in 1995/6 to 9.2% in 1997/8.

Increase in offending?

Over the past 10 years, juvenile crime as a proportion of total crime remained stable at around 22%. Since 1988/89, there had been a steady increase in the number of young people offending (from 33,500 in 1988/89 to 43,504 in 1997/98). In the same period there was also a substantial increase in the number of cleared offences attributed to adults (from 112,800 in 1998/89 to 152,809 in 1995/96).

Dr Maxwell said there had been very little change in the total number of offences attributed by police to children under 14 years. Offending by 10-13 year olds remained a very small proportion of all offending, with offending by 0-9 year olds even more uncommon. However, there had been a dramatic increase in offending among 31-50 year olds since 1991/92. The peak age of offending in most countries, including New Zealand, was around 17 years.

Violent offending

At times the media have focussed on increases in violent offending by children or young people. In response, Dr Maxwell highlighted that the number of violent offences as a whole increased over this period. Secondly, the increases in violent offending did not represent any significant change in the percentage of young people involved in violence - which had fluctuated between 11 and 13% since 1991/92. The rise in juvenile violent offences was similar to the rise in adult violent offences - the proportion of violent offences attributed to juveniles had remained constant since 1991.

However, Dr Maxwell noted that there could be some substance to the claim that the age at which children start to become violent is decreasing. From 1991/92 to 1997/98 the number of violent offences attributed to under nine year olds had almost doubled, as had the number attributed to 10-13 year olds. But then so had the violent offences attributed to 31-50 year olds and those over 50. Dr Maxwell offered an alternative explanation that society was becoming generally less tolerant of violence such as bullying and domestic violence - all were increasingly targets for police action.

Other offences

There had been a small increase in the relative proportion of offences in the areas of drug and anti-social behaviour attributed to juveniles. Numbers had risen from 2,700 in 1991 to 5,230 in 1997/98 - from 8% of all drug and anti-social offending attributed to juveniles to 10%.

Recidivism

Another claim commonly made was that there were now more recidivist child or young offenders. Dr Maxwell told youth advocates that there was no information to confirm or refute these claims and that the lack of data was of concern. She said it should be possible to record and publish figures on court appearances and reappearances.

In their own research Dr Maxwell and Institute of Criminology colleagues had found that of 200 young people who went to a family group conference in 1990/91, only around a quarter were "persistent recidivists" four years later.

Who are young offenders?

Data from Maxwell and Morris' 1993 study of 462 young people who came to the attention of police showed that:

• 80% of those apprehended for offences were boys;
• equal proportions (42%) were Maori and Pakeha and 16% were Pacific Island;
• 27% were 14, 35% 15 and 38% over 16 years;
• 90% were living at home and all but 18% were at school or in a job; and
• 58% had previously come to police notice.

A 1994 study of 109 repeat or serious child offenders aged 10-13 (Maxwell and Robertson, 1995) showed that:

• 21% were not living with their own family;
• 65% had experienced a change in caregiver;
• 38% had other family members involved in crime;
• 48% were already involved in alcohol or drug use or other family members were;
• 60% had at least one incident of recorded physical abuse, witnessing family violence, sexual abuse or neglect;
• 86% were experiencing school problems, truanting, on correspondence or suspended;
• 76% of parents were not coping;
• 72% were known to CYPS; and
• 80% had at least three of the above indicators.

Why do they reoffend?

A 1999 study by Maxwell and Morris showed that out of a group of 14-16 year olds who had a family group conference, 31% had not been convicted in the adult criminal court six years later. Nearly the same percentage (30%) had been persistently reconvicted, often for serious offences.

Factors present in the lives of those who were persistently reconvicted included:

Early life events

• not having people they admired, wanted to be like, who cared about them and people outside the family they felt close to;
• a lack of knowledge of or pride in their culture;
• not having parents who knew where they were or adults who were home when they came home from school;
• not having an effective relationship with their father; and
• being bullied, harshly punished or abused and witnessing family violence.

Early negative outcomes

• not spending leisure time constructively
• truanting, being suspended or expelled; and
• not achieving at school.

Those who did not reoffend were more likely to report that they:

Family group conference events

• agreed with the decision of the family group conference;
• felt remorseful, apologised to the victim, attempted to repair the damage; and
• were not shamed by the process.

Subsequent life events

• had support after the family group conference;
• completed education or obtained training;
• obtained a job;
• developed positive close relationships with others and/or a partner;
• did not live in many different places and associate with other offenders or gangs;
• did not drink a lot, smoke and use dope; and
• did not experience psychiatric difficulties.

Summary

Any increase in offending by children and young people was in line with overall New Zealand crime patterns, Dr Maxwell said.

"It is important to continue to challenge inaccurate media representations of young people and their offending," she said.

Most young people offended at some stage while they were growing up, but most did not offend seriously. Very few became serious and persistent offenders and when they did, the chances were high that they had come from backgrounds of disadvantage and had already been victims of abuse, instability and a lack of love.

Appropriate responses to youth offending through effective family group conferencing can reduce the risk of reoffending, she concluded.