Fight crime at birth says Tamihere

The Herald reports:

West Auckland’s Waipareira Trust wants access to hospital maternity wards to start tackling the “drivers of crime” from birth.

The trust’s chief executive, John Tamihere, plans to use a summit meeting on the drivers of crime at Parliament today to propose a radical devolution of welfare funding to community groups.

He wants to be funded to cut youth offending in Waitakere by 5 or 10 per cent by target dates, rather than to work with young offenders only after they have committed crimes.

Sounds good to me.

Mr Tamihere said the current response to crime was ineffective.

“The problem is that there are 173 groups in Waitakere City putting their hands up for youth-related matters. Furthermore, all their services run nine-to-five, not from 10pm to 6am when all the shit happens.

“We are going to roll out a service in the next three months looking at that, and we have 85 Maori wardens and we’ll start to come together.”

He said the trust was “negotiating access to the maternity wards” to start working with problem families from birth.

Those first few years are critical in determining if someone is likely to have a life of crime or a life of work.