Booze Linked To Teen Crime In Christchurch

By Tina Law and Tanya Katterns - The Press

A growing number of Christchurch pupils are struggling to deal with Mondays after binge drinking at the weekend, a top police officer says. 

Canterbury police district youth services co-ordinator Senior Sergeant John Robinson said yesterday that 15 and 16-year-olds were appearing in the Youth Court on rape and sexual-assault charges.
"I was prosecuting in the Youth Court [on Tuesday] and I saw young person after young person who was there solely because of the abuse of alcohol and for some of the most horrendous crimes that you could imagine."

He said the alleged rapes and sexual assaults were fuelled by alcohol.

It was rare for pupils to arrive at school drunk, but Monday hangovers were a growing problem, he said.
Many problems resulted from parents condoning the use of alcohol and sending their teenage sons and daughters out for the night with six bottles of "ready-to-drink booze", he said.

A study led by Canterbury researchers found Kiwi children as young as four were trying alcohol, and nine-year-olds were using cannabis.

The study of 12,000 young people, published this year, found the onset of drinking "goes up very steeply from age 12", while many were smoking cannabis by 15...."

Read the rest of the article here.

Many adults in NZ view alcohol use by young people as part of a "rite of passage" and "not something of a wider concern" They express sympathy for young people they believed had limited options in terms of social and leisure activities, suggesting they were at times over-policed. This belief is not supported by the number of teenagers appearing in court on rape and sexual abuse charges.

One adult (in Havelock North) laughed off finding comatose teenagers in her yard at weekends by saying."We find people sleeping in our agapanthus every Saturday night. You know that's normal behaviour for .... teenagers." see 80% of people think serious crime is a problem in NZ

One has to question seriously the standards of a society that considers drunken misconduct to be normal in its young people

See also other posts under the tag: Great place to raise kids.

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