Highlights From Our 'Lost Boys of Taranaki' Preview Screening

This week, VICE New Zealand released the latest documentary in our Zealandia series, following the lives of the young men entering the criminal justice system. The Lost Boys of Taranaki meets a group of children going bush with some of them facing one last chance to get on the straight and narrow before they’re sent to youth justice residency.

At the launch we hosted criminal justice advocate Tania Sawicki Mead, START Taranaki's Sam Galloway and Todd Williams, and Valentine Tauamiti, a youth worker who's working currently with youth offenders in the South of Auckland. Here are some photos, plus highlights from what they had to say.

On the common backstory to youth crime
I think, quite often we hold these guys to the same decision-making account that we hold ourselves too. And so say “Oh, I wouldn’t have done that” or “I wouldn’t have made that decision” and I think often, when we think about the systematic failures that happen that lead up to this stuff, we don’t track it back far enough. A lot of where this begins is basically in the womb—it could be pregnant mothers drinking or doing drugs or being exposed to violence. And then again in the first three years of their lives as well, the neglect and trauma that I guess they’re subjected to. It affects the way that their brains are wired, the way they make relationships with people, the way they make decisions. All of those things play into it as. Then being faced with having that inability to sort of function in society, just on your basic brain level, and then be faced with some of the freedoms they have with people like parents, not holding them account to what time they come home. There is a lot deep seeded hurt and anger from things that have happened to them that bottles up and comes out. That’s when us—as a general public—get affected by some of their crime as well and then that becomes, I guess, a societal issue, not just a home issue for them.

— Sam Galloway, START Taranaki supervisor.

On what it's like to encounter the justice system as a young person
I think it’s pretty daunting. I was just at a Family Group Conference on Friday and I felt pretty scared—and I was supposed to be an adult. I can only imagine how daunting it is to be a 14, 15 year old sitting in a room with eight agencies and a whole lot of police and a lawyer telling you what you should do, asking you to be remorseful when most of them don’t know what that means. Language can be a barrier a lot of the time. Some of these young people, if they’ve done crime they have to write letters [to the victims]. One of the young kids [I was working with] just didn’t express themselves. He felt a certain way around apologising. I think what he said in the letter, "I’ll pop around some time" and I think the intent was "you don’t have to feel scared of me anymore" kind of like "I’ll come visit you", but what it sounded like in the letter was “I’m going to stand over you”.

— Valentine Tauamiti, youth worker

On how the youth justice system is working, or not
You’re experience of youth justice system—just like your experience of the justice system in general- depend on who you are. Which is not right, but if you’re a young Māori or Pasifika person, particularly a young man, the discrimination, the disadvantage that you face in that system, is kind of horrifying. When you think that Māori make up 51 percent of the prison population and 15 percent of the general population, there’s something going really really wrong there.

One of the cool things that we do in the youth court system is offer a chance to get people around the table and go "what is the best way that we can intervene in this person’s life to actually help them get the things that they need to live better, to address the things that affect them?". New Zealand’s youth court system has got a lot of cred internationally for trialling these processes, but it’s really easy to just rest on your laurels and be like ‘oh New Zealand’s great on that front’. But on a day-to-day basis it fails so many people so many times. Family group conferences particularly, were found to be really bad at interacting with people’s relationships with their whānau, with their hapu, with their iwi, and even though there are a lot of people there with really good intentions they don’t talk to each other. So your school kicks you out because it’s just too hard to deal with someone who’s got behavioural issues, and then you're faced with a new set of bureaucrats who then have to deal with you as a statistic rather than a person.

— Tania Sawicki Mead

On more helpful ways of talking about youth crime and justice
One of the themes I liked that came out of here is just the ability to change. Your ability to change and I think learning from your mistakes. It’s pretty cliché but I think all of us here have cocked up and you’ve got to learn and I think all these young dudes, and girls as well, out there in the system, often they don’t admit that they’ve made a mistake. And actually it doesn’t just go down as a learning experience for them, sometimes it impacts how they see themselves, their value, their worth. So I reckon just one of the cool rhetorics we could encourage is actually, "you have the ability to change and actually do some good in your life".

— Valentine Tauamiti

I think, a greater attitude that's less us/them and more of a wider supportive attitude. Less ideas of helping people and more ideas of a communal exchange. That whole idea of community and our responsibility as a community—not just people who choose to pick up that responsibility but everyone’s responsibility, to make the community better and make this country better for everyone.

— Todd Williams, START Taranaki youth transition officer

I think getting a clear line drawn on the sand for these young guys about what is an offending issue, what is a crime issue and what is a health issue. As a system, and as a community we can actually say this kid’s done a crime yes, but actually he’s got a health issue and it may be that he has bipolar disorder, and maybe he’s been through some serious trauma and that’s come out of his ADHD and his impulsivity or whatever these things are. But if we don’t address those mental health needs properly, those things are going to carry on and they’re going to end up being incarcerated as adult prisoners with mental health needs.

— Sam Galloway.

On what actually works in changing behaviour
[Programmes like START] that offer care, they offer understanding, they offer a way for people to address the causes of what’s driving them and you know, not just punishment. In general, those are the kinds of things, that’s what evidence says works. Not bootcamps, not curfews, not tougher crime rhetoric. Understanding what drives people, the challenges they face in their life and how to get them through that as well.

— Tania Sawicki Mead

I can only speak from the context of the START programme but I know that belief, showing genuine, actual love and affection, listening and understanding, hearing a point of view and empowering—when I guess they don’t expect that that’s going to happen. That goes a long way. Not giving up.

— Sam Galloway

I think all the common experiences the boys we work with go through strip them of their value and self-worth. When they come to our programme, it’s instinctive that every boy that comes to us is valuable and we show them that. We show them that we value them. And in the best cases, and to varying degrees depending on how hurt the boys are, they begin to believe in the value we place in them. And then once they start to value themselves, then they start to make better decisions for themselves and can start healing from that.

— Todd Williams

There’s a body of work called the Youth 2012 Survey, which finds that one of the biggest protective factors for positive youth development and good decision-making is actually having big people in your life. They reckon about six big people in your life, for positive youth development to occur. What I’ve seen in programmes that have worked, is generally it comes down to relationship, and the longevity of that relationship. These kids have been left down time and time again so if we can go back and rewrite that first point of disappointment whether it’s through their parents or through a loved one, we can actually go "we’re committed to you, and we’re going to walk through this, regardless of how much you disappoint me". They’re going to stick by you. I think that speaks volumes to kids and I’ve seen that happen time and time again.

— Valentine Tauamiti

On what we can all do
We all have things that we’re passionate about, we all have things that we can share with others. If we think about what we’ve become passionate about it’s probably because someone shared it with us. And so if we can do that for these guys, they can find something that I guess can become a life-long passion that can actually keep them safe, keep them focussed. And then down the track maybe share that with someone else as well, so I think that’s pretty important.

— Sam Galloway

We know that one of the biggest barriers to getting more money for programmes like START Taranaki or changing the conversation about how we look after young people rather than how we punish them, is the fact that too many people think that if you are tough on people, young and old, that will somehow deter them from a life of crime. All evidence points to the opposite. But you know, that’s a conversation that we need to have, and that’s something that you need to talk about with your families and communities, to just get that under way.

— Tania Sawicki Mead

Todd Williams, a youth transition officer for START Taranaki also features in the documentary.

Watch Lost Boys of Taranaki here.