Friday, August 04, 2006

Did you know?

Having just read Heather Roy's description of what happened to the thirteen year-old girl who stole and crashed the ACT bus last year I was reminded that;

83 percent of youth offending is dealt with out of court.

This approach is about non-stigmatisation of the offender and empowerment of the victim and offender.

Somehow I don't think Heather is feeling "empowered" right now.

(In fact, the girl was too young to be charged. The Youth Court deals with 15, 16 and 17 year-olds. Since 1974 the aim has been to divert those 14 and under, Children, away from court wherever possible. We no longer have a Children's Court.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

NZ already has one of the world's highest imprisonment rates.

And so many crimes go without a satisfactory resolution.

If we were to take all crime to its logical conclusion, we'd have a staggering imprisonment statistic.

Which begs the question:

WHY?

Oswald Bastable said...

Not really.

Most of the crimes are committed by the same scumbags.

When a thief goes down for burgulary, he will have committed dozens, if not hundereds of other burgs that he will have gotten away with.