Youth crime on the rise

20th September 2016

A youth advocate says crimes committed by youth are increasing due to a lack of boundaries and consequences and an entrenched mentality within the system that makes excuses for their actions.

Jess McVicar who is the youth advocate for the Sensible Sentencing Trust believes the escalation in youth crime is direct consequence of various alternative actions that have been implemented into the Youth Justice System.

Jess says “lately there has been an attack of some sort by a teenager that has made the headlines every week!

The most recent being when two teen girls dragged Nancy Voon 65 out of the car and viciously beat her up before driving off with her car and all her belongings. Ms Voon was taken to Auckland City Hospital Emergency Department unconscious with concussion, broken teeth, a fractured nose and bruising around the face and body.

"They left her there to die. There was blood everywhere. All her clothes and the hospital sheets were soaked in blood.”

“I am absolutely disgusted by this latest attack, the fact that 2 teenage girls are capable of a heinous vicious attack like this.”

“This is exactly why we don't want the youth court age increased to 17, these teenagers know they can get away with these crimes with no punishment because people make excuses for them like they are immature or they didn't realize what they were doing, or perhaps their frontal lobe was not developed.”

Jess says crimes like this are the reason SST is lobbying against increasing the youth court age to 17.

"The argument to raise the age is the teenagers frontal lobe is not fully functioning, they do not have the off switch working to tell them to stop doing what they are doing and they are immature teenagers.”

“But immature or not no one can tell me that an attack that nearly kills an innocent woman is not a planned, thought through attack , they even parked their car behind hers so she couldn't get out.”

“That proves to me that they knew exactly what they were doing and just didn’t give a damn, I just don’t accept this frontal lobe nonsense.”

“Our thoughts are with Nancy Voons family and we wish her a speedy recovery.”
ENDS

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