MEDIA RELEASE
16 MAY 2007

Police Concerns about Increasing Violence from Teenagers No Surprise

Concerns expressed by the Police Association today that they are facing increasing violence and intimidation from teenagers who have no respect for the law comes as no surprise to Family First.

“We have been concerned about the increasing levels of violence in schools,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First. “This has now spilled out onto the streets of New Zealand.”

According to recent Ministry of Education figures, assaults on pupils and staff both increased by almost 40% from 2000 to 2005. Continual disobedience was up 38% and drugs offences 55%. Verbal assaults on pupils increased 20% and verbal assaults on staff 17%. In primary schools alone, physical assaults on staff rose 40%, assaults on other students 33% and sexual harassment up an astonishing 83%.

A Justice Ministry report late last year showed that serious youth violence has increased by 27% since 1996, grievous and serious assaults by 14 to 16-year-olds jumped 54% and aggravated robbery increased a whopping 57%.

“These youth entered a system of education and society where discipline and responsibility were replaced by the politically correct nonsense of childrens’ rights,” says Mr McCoskrie.

“It is significant that as schools have removed corporal punishment, schools have become more dangerous. School yard bullying by pupils on other pupils and staff is now the new form of ‘corporal punishment’ in schools.”

“We have a generation of children who have been victims of a social experiment of how best to raise our kids. And it continues with the ideological drive to ban smacking – another example of undermining parental authority and “state knows best how to raise your kids”.

“Student behaviour will continue to deteriorate for as long as we tell them that their rights are more important than their responsibilities, that proper parental authority is undermined by politicians and subject to the rights of teenagers, and that there will be no consequences of any significance or effectiveness for what they do,” says Mr McCoskrie.

“We also cannot continue to feed the minds of our young people with the level of violence and sexual content that is prevalent in the media without it affecting the minds of some of our most impressionable and at-risk teenagers and children.”

ENDS

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