John MacDonald: Restoring respect key to reducing crime

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Yesterday, the Government announced that it’s going to do what governments do best – putting ambulances at the bottom of cliffs.
The latest one is a $600 million ambulance at the bottom of the crime cliff.
More money for more police officers. More money to crack down on gangs. More money to keep an eye on gun ownership.
Governments do this because they think it’s what we want. And, in some respects, it is because it’s fair to say that doing something is better than doing nothing – especially when it comes to crime.
But, as I say, when it comes down to it – it’s pretty much nothing more than another ambulance at the bottom of another cliff.
Now before the Government made this big announcement yesterday, I’d seen two reports about kids committing crimes here in Canterbury.
The first was about groups of kids – some of them as young as 10 – stealing cars and driving around Christchurch and bragging about it all on social media.
The second report was about a mum wanting the police to take action against a bunch of 11- and 13-year-olds who took to her 13-year-old son in an unprovoked attack in broad daylight at a Christchurch park.
He was riding his scooter and they just pushed him off it and started kicking and punching him in the head while he was on the ground. He was taken to hospital with a concussion and he’s still recovering – physically and emotionally. He can’t understand why it happened and he’s scared to go out now.
This happened about a fortnight ago and, according to the report I read at the weekend, the police have spoken to the kids who did it but that’s about it. And so, this mother feels she and her son have been let down by the system. She wants them punished.
The problem is, though, that by the time a 10, 11, 12 or 13-year-old is out stealing cars and attacking kids in the park, they’ve reached a point where their respect for authority (let alone respect for others) has gone by the wayside. And even if the police did take some action against these kids involved in the attack at the park, chances are they wouldn’t give a stuff because the rot has already set in.
When I think back to when I was 11 or 12, I would’ve been terrified of getting into trouble with the cops. That doesn’t seem to be the case these days, does it?
And the Government can throw as many millions of dollars as it likes at training up more police, cracking down on gangs (whatever that means) and setting up a gun register – all of that stuff – but it’ll do nothing towards getting to the nub of the problem.
Which, as far as I’m concerned, is that so many of these kids are victims too.
Now, before you start thinking I’m some sort of criminal sympathiser, I’m not. When our place was broken into years ago, I wanted to throttle the creep that did it.
But I also saw another side of things a couple of years ago when I visited Oranga Tamariki’s youth justice facility here in Christchurch.
I went there with a journalist who was interviewing one of the kids locked up there. He was a big guy, a real tough dude, intimidating as. As most of the kids there were. It was pretty feral, to be honest.
But when this big, angry, intimidating guy sat down and started talking to the reporter – I tell you what – it was heartbreaking.
This guy was so emotionally damaged. His arms were crossed the whole time, eye contact was sporadic and when the reporter asked him one question in particular – the few words he said, said it all.
She asked him how often his family visited him. And he said: “They’ve never visited”. They’ve never visited.
And at that moment, while I had no sympathy for him as a criminal, I had a truckload of sympathy for him as a person.
Which is not how I was expecting to feel when I went there that day.
And he is why I’m convinced that the Government can do whatever it wants and put as many ambulances at the bottom of the...

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