An expert on youth crime says punitive measures such as boot camps and being hard on gangs do nothing to reduce crime.
Psychologist Armon Tamatea from the University of Waikato’s Te Puna Haumaru New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science says the current police approach to target crime but also work with gangs is preferable, because it builds on the gangs’ sense of community and reduces criminal behaviour.
He says international research shows the boot camps or military-style academies proposed by National do nothing to stop young people reoffending.
“I think culturally we have amnesia about what it’s like to be young and for some reason we seem to like punishing and hammering our young people and that’s been an issue forever but it’s certainly been quite fierce this political round,” he says.
Dr Tamatea says current approaches blame the young person or their whānau or the system, rather than taking a strength-based culturally-informed approach like iwi panels.
