Facility to house less serious at-risk youth

The proposed new programme to be run at Te Hurihanga's eight-bed facility will cater for less serious at-risk youth, while the most hardened offenders in the upper and central North Island will head to a new facility near Rotorua.

The Justice Ministry announced last week it would scrap a three-year pilot programme at Te Hurihanga in Hillcrest and introduce a shorter-stay treatment run by Child Youth and Family.

Child Youth and Family deputy chief executive Ray Smith said the new programme at Hamilton's controversial youth justice unit would complement the new secure 30-bed residential facility opening near Rotorua in August.

CYF contributes funding to a range of care and protection and youth justice services in the Waikato including Raukura Waikato Social Services, River City Training Academy Programme, Ngati Manaipoto Marae Pact Trust, Kauri Centre, Salvation Army and Hauraki Maori Trust Board.

Mr Smith said the programme would focus on providing parenting programmes, mentoring, drug and alcohol counselling, education, training and employment.

Justice Minister Simon Power has defended the Government's decision to replace the Youth Horizons programme with the CYF-run one, calling it a transfer, and extension of the pilot programme that would have the same "ethos and philosophy" and retain the lessons learned at Te Hurihanga.

Though the change meant a cost saving to the Government, Mr Power said he was confident the new programme would effectively address the needs of young offenders.

Mr Power rejected criticism from opposition leader Phil Goff that without the level of intervention offered in the Youth Horizons treatment, many of the teenage boys in the nine to 18-month programme would be in prison.

"I am committed to rehabilitation and do not accept Mr Goff's underlying assumption of further and more serious offending by these youths. The Government is not looking to buy its way out of potential offending."

Only five of the 23 youths who have undertaken the programme since it began in April 2007 had not completed it.

Eight had graduated and had so far not re-offended while a further 10 were still on the course.

A 2 1/2 year evaluation of the programme had cost $141,522.

Rethinking Crime and Punishment project manager Kim Workman said the Government's decision defied logic.

"Te Hurihanga was deliberately designed after comprehensive consultation with rehabilitation experts, the Commissioner of Police and Tainui, to target the most serious young offenders and their families and whanau," Mr Workman said.

"After years of planning, and initial support from philanthropists such as Sir Stephen Tindall, this programme had all the signs of being a world leader in the transformation of highly dysfunctional young offenders who, without intensive intervention, would end up in prison.

"Te Hurihanga is designed to care for 80 very serious offenders over the next 10 years at a cost of $17 million. The taxpayer cost per offender if this programme is shut down will be around $80 million over the next decade."

- © Fairfax NZ News