Pubdate: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 Source: New Zealand Press Association (New Zealand Wire) Copyright: 2003 New Zealand Press Association Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/New+Zealand (New Zealand) OECD STUDY 'GROSSLY MISLEADING' - GOFF An international study claiming New Zealand has the highest teen crime rate in the world is "grossly misleading and inaccurate", Justice Minister Phil Goff said yesterday. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report said New Zealand had the highest rate of suspected participation in teenage crime at 4012 per 100,000 people under 20. Germany followed with 3769 per 100,000 and Finland with 2324. New Zealanders aged under 25 had the worst suicide rate among the 30 OECD countries in the late 1990s, at 13.6 people per 100,000. Ireland was next with 10.3 and Finland was on 9.9. It also had the highest rate of cannabis use among people aged 15 and over and the third-highest rate of amphetamine use, after Australia and Britain. But Mr Goff said the study was not worth the paper it was written on as it did not compare like with like. "For example, our statistics count every individual offence, while other jurisdictions count individual offenders," he said. "A person who has committed 50 offences will be counted in apprehension figures 50 times but in other countries they may be registered only once." A Justice Ministry check with Canadian counterparts showed they counted all an individual's offences as one offence, whereas New Zealand listed all individual offences. The ministry would write to the OECD highlighting the inaccuracies of the comparisons and asking that future surveys compared like with like, Mr Goff said. Youth Affairs Ministry chief executive Anne Carter said the statistics showed young New Zealanders were worse off than their peers in other countries but urged people to remember they were several years old. New Zealand data not included in the OECD report showed the youth suicide rate had declined significantly from a peak in 1995 and by 2000 was the lowest since 1986. The Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft also said the report was unreliable. "The figures in the report seem meaningless, and apparently grossly exaggerate our offending rates," Judge Becroft said in a statement. The OECD report relied on a United Nations survey that was six years old. He said the data was based on the number of offenders caught by police, rather than the number of people breaking the law, while some countries recorded different statistics. "If, for example, a person is apprehended for five offences, then those offences are included in the offender apprehension figure five times (in New Zealand). "The result is that the New Zealand figure in the OECD report has been greatly over-inflated by multiple counting of offences rather than individual offenders. "In essence the report has plainly got it wrong." Judge Becroft said if international comparisons were to be made, comparable data needed to be collected. He said the report was also disappointing for people who worked with youth. "The overall picture in New Zealand is nothing like that suggested by the OECD report... "What the report doesn't show is that youth offending has slowed significantly in the last five years, even though the general population has increased." ACT MP Muriel Newman said the report was a damning indictment on the failure of successive governments to face up to the destructive effects on increasing family breakdown. She believed the only way to turn around such grim statistics was to reform the domestic purposes benefit and introduce shared parenting initiatives. "The Government must start to treat the causes, rather than the symptoms, of what is an entrenched problem for New Zealand," she said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake