An Auckland mum has described the almost helpless feeling of watching her 14-year-old daughter get sucked into a life of stealing cars and disobeying authorities with a youth ram raid gang.

She fears her runaway child “coming home in a box” and believes the disruption of Covid-19 lockdowns on daily school life started the chaos.

From what Zoe* knows, her daughter joined a group of about 15 teens - most of them like-minded school drop-outs - and has committed ram raids on businesses, including allegedly a Remuera retailer.

In an emotional interview with the Herald, Zoe recalled looking out her window in the early hours and watching her daughter led down the driveway by two police officers.

Her teen daughter had ploughed a stolen car into the rear end of a Ford Ranger, near her home in Te Atatu.

She had been missing for two and a half days.

“I worry about that a lot, I was grateful she was home but I saw the debris from the crash - it was pretty bad. They just got out of the car and ran.”

Zoe said her household has been turned upside-down since the last Auckland Covid-19 lockdown and has watched her daughter drift further away from school.

The “other friends” were a bad crowd, several of whom had dropped out of school, while Zoe said her daughter is “a follower, not a leader”.

“It’s pretty easy for young people if they get stood down from their school, to end up hanging out on the streets,” she said.

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“When they’re kicked out of school there’s no mainstream alternative - they’re just hanging out with kids who have been through the same things and they form a group.”

Zoe believes youth offenders have "no incentive" to stop committing crimes. Photo / Michael Craig

Zoe said keeping her daughter on the straight and narrow is “the hardest thing”.

“I ask my daughter what if it was her car, for example, that she’d bought with her hard-earned money which got crashed into, how would she feel? Put yourself in their shoes,” she said. “She just laughs and jokes about it.”

Some of the damage from her daughter’s activities has been charged to Zoe.

When asked about the belief held by some that parents should be held accountable for their children’s actions, Zoe said it depended on the circumstance.

“At 13 and 14 they know right from wrong, they can still do community service and be punished for it,” she said.

“Their parents could be the nicest people in the world and come from a good home, then they’ll go and do this leaving their parents to wonder ‘how could they do this?’”

Zoe’s daughter is known to the police. She isn’t facing any charges currently, but has been referred to Youth Aid on several occasions.

Zoe’s daughter is known to police, she’s been referred to Youth Aid on a number of occasions. Photo / Supplied.

Zoe believes Youth Aid officers were motivated to help young offenders, but that it doesn’t offer enough.

“There’s no incentive, no repercussions to the crime they’ve done. She sits in a cell for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, then dropped off on the doorstep.”

Zoe wants youth offenders to face their victims and apologise to the shop owners they hurt for harming their livelihoods.

Police said Youth Aid officers aim to keep young people out of the court system while making sure the offenders are responsible for their actions through alternative action.

A police spokesperson said young people will go through family group conferences or youth court in the “most serious instance”.

Statistics revealed in September showed the number of young people ending up in court is dropping.

Thirteen hundred people aged 10 to 17 appeared in court during the year to June 30, compared to 1500 the year prior. The most common crimes were theft, assault, burglary and robbery and the majority were male.

What solutions are being proposed? Calls for ‘circuit breakers’

National’s police spokesman Mark Mitchell noted the 400 per cent spike in ram raids over the last year across NZ and said stronger policies need to be introduced.

“Let’s be clear, if you have parents engaged and want to parent but have a kid who’s fallen into the wrong group and are exacerbated, they should be given the help.

“There should be massive wrap-around support from the Government to get the kids back on the right track.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Minister Chris Hipkins have also acknowledged a significant rise in specific crimes such as ram raids, while generally youth crime is down.

National’s police spokesman Mark Mitchell noted the spike in the country’s ram raids over the last year. Photo / Mark Mitchell

National announced last month its intention to introduce a young-offender military academy, which would see offenders aged 15 to 17 would be sent away for up to 12 months for rehabilitation.

The idea was criticised by sociologists and criminologists, while Zoe is on the fence about it.

“It possibly could help, I’d have to look through the programme first to get a decent opinion on it,” she said.

“They need to be listened to, not just a ‘my way or the highway’ approach but to hear their side - get them to sit down and talk about why they do what they do.”

Zoe loves her daughter and said she thinks she’s “a good kid”, but wants to see her with new influences around her.

“She has the potential to be whatever she wants, but she won’t get there doing crime and wrecking other people’s lives.”

When Ardern was asked in November about whether she was soft on crime, she disagreed and spoke of the long sentences available for those who committed offences such as aggravated robberies.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was not soft on crime. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Government also announced last week every small business in the country would be eligible for access to a subsidised fog cannon. Additional government funding of $4 million was also made available to local councils to assist with crime prevention measures.

The prime minister spoke of the complexity of dealing with offenders younger than 12, who were unable to appear before the Youth Court.

Ardern said the Government was focused on providing effective prevention and intervention programmes for those youth to stop them from becoming offenders.

Brendon Crompton, a youth worker with Blue Light Foundation who works regularly with kids involved in criminal activity, notes as many as 90 per cent of young offenders are unenrolled in formal education.

They also typically have family dysfunction which means a lack of adult supervision, he said.

“There’s no engagement in sport, [they’re] surrounded by negative peer groups, there is drug and alcohol taking so put all that into context - how do you deal with that?” he said.

“The only way is a circuit breaker and remove them from the environment, so let’s remove them - you actually start teaching young people how to be successful in life.”

Such circuit breakers, Crompton said, can be programs Blue Light, which teach troubled youths important lessons about routine, responsibility and introducing functional boundaries in place.

“At the same time, you need people working in the whanau group - key workers working alongside the family,” Crompton said.

“That should be for WINZ and [Ministry of Social Development] to talk at the table about what the whanau needs. We’re talking about a youth justice system.”

Crompton said early intervention is significant to change a young person’s life trajectory.

* Names have been changed in this story for legal reasons