Paul Basham: Police Assistant Commissioner Investigations on the reduction in youth reoffending as a result of the Fast Track protocol

Police say that community response is to thank for positive youth crime outcomes.  

More than 70% of children and youths referred through the youth offender support protocol —Fast Track— haven't been re-referred.  

The protocol, created by Oranga Tamariki, finds support services to prevent youth re-offending. 

Police Assistant Commissioner Investigations Paul Basham told Mike Hosking that it shows the system is working.  

He says troubled kids are getting the help they need, and crime is being prevented as a result. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We got some insights, some stats from the police on
their focus on this violence and retail crime. So we've
got ram raids down eighty three percent on August of
last year. Foot patrols are increasing sixty three percent in
Central Auckland. Around seventy four percent of Now, this is
the key, seventy four percent of children and young people
put through Fast Track Youth offending programs haven't been referred back.

(00:20):
Assistant Commissioner Investigations, Paul Basham's with us. Paul, very good
morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Good morning Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
What's happening here? That's seventy four percent stat I give
with the children young persons. Are they being treated differently?
Are they being in the system for the first time?
What's happened there?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, I think what you're sort of seeing there is
evidence of the kind collective ambition of agencies like police
and OLGA, Tomareiki working together to try and keep these
kids out of the system and to prevent them from
befinding in the first place. You know, we have an
agency old dobbers to hit our hands on these offenders.
And you know, let's be clear, a lot of these

(00:58):
children and use that we've refer to generically very troubled kids,
but they are out there in the environment causing a
lot of crime, and often causing crime that's associated with
violent so pleasers peace and this is to get our
hands on them and to bring them into the system.
And I think the fast Track is an example where
we are able to do that and work productively with

(01:21):
other agencies like ordering a Tamariki and other various multi
agency groups that come into that space, you can have
some success in keeping their use in children out of
the system and therefore preventing further crime and harm out there.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
We'd talk about us in the community seeing the difference.
Cops are on the street, We're seeing the stats. I'm
reading the stats out Do you feel, as police you
are tangibly now making a difference.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah. Look, I'd like to speak to the dedication and
the effort of the police officers, the front line responders,
and our investigators, our major crime teams and others are
out there dealing with this day and day out. I
think the statistics are positive. We're not sort of we're
not declaring victory or anything like that. We understand that

(02:08):
there's a lot of work that needs to be done,
but I can provide your listeners with a high degrad
of very assurance that we are really keen and very
positive about being out there and being visible and very
driven to hold these offenders in the sort of offending
to account.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Do you think just the visibility is a chilling effect?
In other words, they've tried it on. They're not afraid
of the law because there is no law to be seen.
Suddenly the law is there on the corner. Suddenly the
crime drops. Is that that simple or is there more
to it than that?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, yeah, there probably is a bit more to it
than that. But you know, at the end of the day,
you know pleasing and certainly the model that we follow
here based on an English model over the last hundred
years or so, it comes back to some pretty sort
of consistent basics and being visible and being in the
right place undertaking the right sort of plessing activity. In
this case, you know, increasing foot patrols, and we've made

(03:05):
announcements recently about what we're doing in that space. There's
plenty of science out there that so this says those
simple acts of being visible in providing that reassurance is
really effective. It creates risk for offenders that might run
a roll the dice and take a chance somewhere. But
it also provides the community and others with a high

(03:26):
degree of reassurance. So it takes a lot of boxes
and it's a basic, simple, pleasing deployment model that's been
around for quite some time.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Paul, appreciate your time very much, Paul Basham, who's the
Assistant Commissioner in charge of investigations, and so nicely summed
up in one answer, isn't it if you're visible and
you're in the right place. It's been around for a
long time and we're suddenly back into it and gosh,
it works. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen
live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,

(03:58):
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