Analysis: Youth justice residences are where young people go when their behaviour is criminal, sometimes seriously criminal, when home cannot care for them (almost always, they are not safe at home), and when they are too young for prison.
I’ve visited one, in Palmerston North, twice.
The staff I met there truly seemed to me to be caring people, motivated by a desire to be a force for good in the lives of these young people, and doing a difficult and vitally important job in ways that weren’t always perfect but aspired to be transformative.
Most of us will never meet children this broken.
Even as I type these words, I remember the two children/young women, one 15, one 17, who sat close beside each other and told me the story of their lives.
The 15-year-old had braided the older one's hair.
For some reason, that ordinary detail always makes my eyes water. I recall my daughter, at a similar age, and how she and her friends would do each other’s hair, and giggle with delight at their creations.
There isn’t much giggling in the lives of the children who end up in youth justice residences. Not at home.
They told me of seeing and experiencing violence, daily. They told me of watching their mothers being beaten up – and worse. They told me of being given methamphetamine as young as 13. Of huffing glue at 12. They told me of being broken.
A number of workers have been removed from duty over several incidents, including one where fighting was allegedly filmed by staff. (Source: 1News)
We called the story Tough Love.
The “Love” was crossed out because there hadn’t been any. Or there had been so little it couldn’t save them. The “Love” was crossed out because people who demand we get tougher on these youngsters don’t understand they’ve already had the tough, it’s the love they’ve been denied.
And now I read of the cynical and brutalising behaviour at an Oranga Tamariki facility I have not visited - Korowai Manaaki in South Auckland.
I despair.
These young people are made criminal, broken and lost by upbringings of violence. They are made criminal, broken and lost by authority figures who do not honour that responsibility, but betray it in the most appalling and damaging ways.
In part, we put these young people in youth justice residences to keep them safe from harm. To give them some respite. To give them a small chance of starting again.
Some of them do start again. Not very many. But when they do, it’s a wondrous and inspiring thing. When they do, it’s joyful.
Whatever happens, they have to be safe.
Read more: Exclusive John Campbell interview with locked up teen ram-raiders
What we know from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care is that when the state betrays people it is a profound abandonment.
There is nothing left but betrayal. There is usually nowhere for them to go. They have no voice. And no-one to hear it if they do manage to speak up.
They may try to tell us. They may break out of the facility, and get onto the roof, and scream their hurt and rage into the winter night. And then we joke about the fact that all they wanted was some KFC.
The incident was filmed at the same facility where youths escaped onto the roof just days ago. (Source: Breakfast)
No. They want care. They deserve care. They need care.
READ MORE: Youth crime: John Campbell meets a young offender who stopped
And if they don’t get care in these facilities, where will they get it?
If the places that are meant to take these children from lives of violence and betrayal and teach them how to live among us, replicate that violence and betrayal, then what are we left with?
We are breaking the broken.
What a terrible thing to do.
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