John MacDonald: Why aren't young troublemakers going to court?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Last week, we wanted to canonise Judge Campbell Savage - the Christchurch judge who sent that 18-year-old to prison for just under three years.

He was a real scoundrel that kid and, as I said last week, when I saw the story in the news I had to read it several times just to be sure that what I thought I saw was real.

An 18-year-old sent to prison. Who would’ve thought? And, I’m picking you were like me, and you couldn’t quite believe it either.

But, after the news we’ve been hearing today, it’s lucky that guy actually ended up in court in the first place because new stats show that last year more than half of the teenagers and kids caught nicking stuff from shops didn’t end up in court.

Instead, they got to have things like family group conferences. These are generally run by Oranga Tamariki and, what they do is they try to get to the nub of the problem as to why a kid has gone off the rails, and then they put together a plan to get everyone working together to get them back on the straight and narrow.

But some of these kids who didn’t go to court didn’t even have to go to a family group conference. They got off with either a formal or informal warning. Can you imagine the impact an informal warning would have?

Which is why I think most of them - if not all of them - should’ve gone through the courts. And I’ll tell you why I think that.

Number 1: Courts don’t just hand out punishments. They also set obligations. Obligations that people can be held accountable to. If someone gets a warning —formal or informal— outside the court, there’s no obligation. There’s just an expectation that they’ll pull up their socks.

But if you’re obliged to be good, because a judge said so, it’s so much easier to try and keep someone on the right track. Or get them on the right track.

Reason Number 2 why these kids should be going through the courts: In some cases (not all), but in some cases, a court appearance will spook someone so much that they realise they’re on a slippery slope if they keep doing what they’re doing, and they will pull their head in.

And Reason Number 3 why pretty much every young person who commits a crime should go to court is that it tells the victims of crime that they matter.

You imagine running a shop and some of these really bad kids keep doing your place over, how would you feel hearing they got a warning? Or got to do the old family group conference thing?

You’d feel cheated, wouldn’t you? You’d feel like all the attention and concern was going to the offender, wouldn’t you? I reckon I would.

And what about the police who haul these kids in? They must feel cheated at times too.

This, by the way, is not me saying every shoplifter or every young offender should be locked up. This is me saying that courts are places where obligations to behave yourself are made very clear.

If you do this again, this will happen to you. This is your last chance. Yes, your honour.

This informal warning thing, what obligations come out of that? None. A warning might tell someone they’re expected to behave better, but it doesn’t tell them they’re obliged to behave better.

And that’s what courts do.

Do you think Christchurch's Judge Campbell Savage would let some young punk walk out of court with no obligations to sort themselves out and stop offending? Of course that wouldn’t happen.

There’d be no limp expectations; there would be hard-and-fast obligations.

Not that every judge could be relied on to be as staunch as Judge Savage. But I reckon, hands down, a lot more would be gained from putting these kids through the courts system, instead of the family group conferences, warnings, and wet bus tickets.

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