Family Decision-making in Youth Justice: the New Zealand Model

IN THE PAST, THERE HAS BEEN A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO dealing with young offenders. Two main models which contended for legislative implementation internationally in the 1950s and 1960s were the "crime control" model and the "welfare" approach. The "crime control" approach advocates a tough response to offenders, particularly the use of custodial penalties for severe and persistent offenders. The "welfare" approach emphasises "causes" and, hence, the need to "treat" basic social and personal problems, often by removing the children and young people from "bad" environments to institutions. In practice therefore, the two approaches were often very similar: both led to young people being placed in institutions, either for "their own good" or for punishment. Until recently, the result was that large numbers of children were placed in institutions in New Zealand either because of parental neglect or because of their problem behaviour. Problem behaviour included a wide range: from criminal offences, to status offences such as absconding from care or to merely "not being under proper control". In other words, difficulties in parental management were often attributed to the child, who was effectively punished by institutionalisation for an indeterminate period perhaps the rest of their childhood. Recently, it has become apparent in New Zealand, as elsewhere, that the institutionalisation of large numbers of children and young people is damaging to them, ineffective in preventing delinquency, and quite unjust. Thus the new approach follows international trends in emphasising: