I saw a discussion on one of those community Facebook pages the other day about kids being little monkeys and knocking on people’s doors at night and running away.

The person who put up the original post wasn’t happy that this was happening to one of their elderly neighbours and wanted parents in the area to make sure it wasn’t their kids doing it.

What followed was a pretty heated discussion about kids just being kids and the person who made the post was told in no uncertain terms to lighten up.

“Ahh, they’re just knocking on doors having some fun. What’s the big deal?”

It might not be a big deal for some people but, as the person on this community Facebook page pointed out, this sort of thing can be a big deal for elderly people who don’t like knocks on the door when it’s dark and who can find it difficult even getting to the front door.

Kids just being kids. Which is not something we’re hearing said today about these ram raid stats that are just out.

In the past five years, the number of ram raids have increased by 400 percent. You may have heard Police Minister Chris Hipkins talking about it this morning with Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB. He had some other stats too.

Since May this year, there have been 129 ram raids. Almost all of them have been done by kids under-18. In fact, the median age of these kids is just 15.

Kids just being kids? Like I say, not many people trotting that line out today. But maybe it is kids just being kids in 2022. Which raises the question - are some kids in this country just out of control?

And if that’s the question? Then what’s the answer? Well, my answer is yes - I think it’s obvious that some kids in this country are out of control.

And I think the person who went onto that local Facebook page the other day about the elderly neighbours being harassed by door-knocking at night absolutely did the right thing, because we need more people to do this sort of thing and remind parents (especially) that they have a responsibility to know what their kids are up to.

The ACT Party’s deputy leader Brooke van Velden wrote a piece on nzherald.co.nz this week about the need for people who behave badly to face consequences for their actions.

She made the point that not many of the kids doing these ram raids would’ve started with ram raids. She said most of them would have started with something small, got away with it, and moved on to bigger things.

And the reason for that happening, is that they hadn’t faced any consequences - even for the small stuff. Small stuff like picking on elderly people and knocking on their door at night and running away.

It’s just “kids being kids”, remember? I’d bet money that the same thing was probably said about these 15-year-olds who are now doing the ram raiding, when they showed first signs of going off the rails.

And so Brooke van Velden from ACT has been saying that kids need to learn that their actions have consequences. She says the sooner they learn that, the less likely they are to re-offend.

She wants to see what she calls “Instant Practical Penalties” for kids - these would be things like making them clean-up any graffiti-ing they do, making them apologise to shopkeepers for stealing stuff, and other things like instant fines.

Van Velden makes the point that, as long as we live by the values of shifting blame - which the Police Minister appeared to be doing on the radio this morning when he was talking about these kids being “disengaged” - Brooke van Velden says if we keep doing that, it’s a slippery slope.

I would say that locking kids away has to be a last resort. But I think the ACT Party is bang-on when it says kids have to face consequences if they behave badly. And if it’s not going to come from parents - as it clearly isn’t in some cases - then, as a society, we are failing these kids if we don’t jump in and say “what you’re doing isn’t acceptable, and you need to face consequences”.

Consequences which, at the moment, seem to be sorely lacking

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