Recently, Dr Julia Ioane from The University of Auckland presented the findings of her PhD research on violent Pacific Island youth offenders to the HRC’s Pacific Health Research Committee. The purpose of Julia’s quantitative study, which was funded by a 2008 Pacific health career development award, was to evaluate and analyse the demographic and criminal behaviour of Pacific Island violent youth offenders and compare with a sample of New Zealand Palagi and Māori violent youth offenders.
Julia tracked the offending histories of Pacific Island, Māori and Palagi violent youth offenders aged between 10 and 24 years of age at the time of their offending using New Zealand Police records (200 youth offenders from each ethnicity).
Julia's main focus was to see whether there are risk factors unique to the Pacific Island violent youth offending population, so that interventions can be targeted more effectively.
Risk factors for Pacific Island youth included mental health disorders, reports of injury and violence from drinking, and anecdotal evidence of the increasing rates of conduct problems among Pacific Island youth.
Here's what Julia's research showed about the typical Pacific Island youth offender:
• male
• New Zealand-born
• grew up in the lowest socio-economic areas in New Zealand
• exposed to or involved in family violence (more than half of those in the study had been exposed to family violence)
• began offending at an average age of 17, with more than half of this group committing a violent offence as a first offence
• violent offending was more prominent among Pacific Island youth offenders in comparison with Māori youth offenders, and Pacific youths in this study appeared to offend more violently and more frequently than Palagi youth offenders
• most common type of violent offence committed by Pacific Island youths in this study was serious assaults, which includes ‘male assaults female ‘and ‘assaults person’.
“Youth violence prevention measures need to include issues specific to Pacific Island youth,” says Julia. “This includes working directly with the young person and their families, and addressing mental health disparities, alcohol and drug issues, antisocial peers, cultural identification and psychosocial impacts among this population.”
Julia aims to continue with postdoctoral research in this area.
To read more about the research findings of other Pacific career development award recipients, check out pages 6 and 7 of the latest issue of Pacific News (PDF 904kb).