The latest police statistics show offending committed by young people has plummeted during the past four years but robbery has gone up.
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Those aged 19 or younger are committing crime at a rate 30 percent less than four years ago - adding weight to claims including 17-year-olds in the Youth Court is a step in the right direction.
But their involvement in robbery has bucked the trend rising and critics say young violent offenders are getting easy justice at the expense of their victims.
The recently released police crime data showed young New Zealanders were committing assault (26 percent), sexual assault (25 percent), burglary (28 percent) and theft (39 percent) at drastically lower rates than they were four years ago.
The police's acting national manager for youth, Senior Sergeant Simon King, said the reasons behind the drop were complex, but one factor which had been identified was a change in lifestyle compared to teens of previous generations.
"The routine activities are different to the 70s, 80s, 90s. [There's] much more time spent on screens, on the internet, gaming, there's a lot more young people spending time in organised activities and less of that hanging out on the street that used to happen a bit more in the past," he said.
But one area in which offending had gone in the opposite direction was robbery.
Young people were committing 52 percent more robberies than four years ago and were now responsible for almost 60 percent of robberies nationwide.
That was a concern, Mr King said.
"A lot of those things that have contributed to a reduction in youth crime, they apply often to young people who would have done that one-off kind of offending that lots of people do as they grow up.
"What we're left with that is harder to tackle is the more ingrained, serious offending that's committed by a small group of people."
It was why police were working closely with Oranga Tamariki and other social agencies to have a positive impact in vulnerable children's lives.
Oranga Tamariki director of youth justice system development Phil Dinham said that approach was paying dividends.
"When we looked at that cluster what we see across the board … most of them come from really troubled families.
"What we saw when we analysed that group is huge opportunities to do better, sooner."
That had meant working with their children's whānau to get them engaged in school and healthy social activities, Mr Dinham said.
But Sensible Sentencing Trust's youth advocate Jess McVicar said the softly-softly approach, and the coming inclusion of 17-year-olds into the Youth Court, was undermining the rights of victims.
"[For] first-time offenders there's something that hasn't gone right and they do need protected and they do need a guidance of sort.
"But then we've got the re-offenders and the crimes that are happening - we've got 16 and 17-year-olds committing murder. What is happening to these kids? Are they getting guidance? Are they getting help?"
Putting 17-year-olds in Youth Court would lump more work on an already stretched police force, she said.
Youth advocate Tupua Urlich, who himself was a state ward, disagreed and said the Youth Court changes and formation of Oranga Tamariki showed the country was taking the right steps.
However, almost half of those young people dealt with by police were Māori and there was still more work to do to address that historic and institutional racism.
"Look at the number of Māori living in poverty and you add onto the other side of that the systemic racism.
"We've all heard the stats - eight percent more likely to be charged or convicted. Māori don't get a fair go."
Addressing poverty would go a long way toward addressing violent offending, he said.
