Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The police minister says the aim of the government's plan to curb youth crime is to get young people engaged in something constructive.
The new $53 million government package was announced this morning in response to a rise in youth crime - particularly in Auckland.
Children under 14 caught doing ram raids will be given intensive support to steer them away from crime, towards study and work.
Education and employment programmes would also be extended to thousands more at-risk young people.
Police minister Chris Hipkins told RNZ the move wasn't about reducing prosecutions, but reducing offending.
"I want to get these kids off the street, into school, into education, into training, into employment so that they're not getting into trouble in the first place," he said.
"The goal here is to get these kids engaged in something constructive."
When asked about increased police proceedings against young people in Auckland, Hipkins said there had a been an elevated level of offending by youth in the region.
"What we're doing is we're acknowledging you've got a you've got to tackle this on both ends," he said.
"You've got to basically have the police out there doing the job that we expect them to do and they're doing that, but we've also got to be doing more as a country to reduce the the pressure on police to do that by reducing the offending in the first place."
Hipkins said the government was also trying to increase demand for exisiting programmes, like Youth Guarantee, a programme targeted at youth who have left school with no qualifications, which he said was undersubscribed.
"Youth Guarantee is a programme that up until now has had an age limit being kept," he said.
"We're extending the age limit right up to 25 and we're increasing the amount of pastoral care support by the amount of money that goes into providing pastoral care support."
When asked about the $6m Ram Raid Protection Fund, Hipkins said he would have liked to see faster progress.
The fund had only helped five businesses so far, despite having a goal of 500.
"With this particular project, I would have liked to have seen faster progress," he said. "I am confident that we're going to see some faster progress in the next few weeks."
Hipkins said police were putting more resources into getting security assessments done for ram-raided businesses.
What the package includes
- Children in Counties Manukau caught in ram raids are already being referred to the Social Wellbeing Board - a cross agency team including police and social workers - and that's now being extended to West Auckland.
- Youth Guarantee Programme which allows some 16-19-year-olds to participate in some courses free of charge extended to support up to 1100 more participants
- He Poutama Rangatahi youth employment scheme extended to support around 1400 more rangatahi
- Ākonga Fund extended to the end of 2023 to support up to 2750 additional young people and their whānau
- 232 families with children set to benefit from the scaling up of the family functional therapy, intensive mentoring and community-led youth inclusion programmes
