Little Criminals: The Story of a New Zealand Boys' Home

by David Cohen

  For the most part, any of the department’s childcare employees who harboured ambitions to professionalise their skills historically had to make do with a couple of in-service training courses, each lasting a week and held up at Kohitere, devoted to the institutional care of youngsters. A cadet scheme for junior officers, for example, allowed a handful of employees to simultaneously follow a course of study at Victoria while working in the field, but here the participants tended to be field officers rather than residential workers.

  Matters did not appreciably improve during the 1960s, although the Department of Social Welfare was by now offering a 12-week training course for newly appointed housemasters, albeit only those who had the time to attend. In the case of Epuni this meant very few of the resident housemasters, or possibly none at all if a survey of the Ministry of Social Development’s collection of records is any guide. (Only one Epuni name features across the lists still kept by the ministry.)

  ‘We didn’t have a huge skills base among our residential staff of the time, although when I say that I’m reminded that the same probably still applies today,’ said Geoff Comber, noting that the time it might typically take any person to understand the behaviour of ‘delinquent’ children, acquire the skills of group control and develop the confidence to put both into action would probably be at least a couple of years — yet few ever stayed that long.

  Overall, fewer than one in two staff employed anywhere by the Department of Social Welfare availed themselves of any kind of staff training, and given the unusually demanding workload at Epuni and the constant turnover of staff, it seems reasonable to assume that the uptake was even lower in Lower Hutt. Then again, it was something of an open question as to why a baker from Petone or a fruit and vegetable grower — as a couple of Epuni employees had been prior to becoming housemasters — should even want to improve his resume. The institution offered no system of performance review or even a recognisable career ladder. As a result, Comber said with a sigh, the institution ‘had more than one or two very strange’ staff members in respect of their administrative techniques.

  The insistence on endless lineups offered an example of how this would sometimes play out. ‘When you’re dealing with a group of young kids, even in the best of schools let alone a group of youngsters with behavioural problems, you don’t keep them standing at attention too long,’ Comber said, recalling one confrontation he had over the subject. ‘I mean, that’s a point of organisation, right — you organise them and you move them on.’

  One of his colleagues, Tony Weinberg, thought otherwise. ‘Tony was ever the disciplinarian. He was always like, “Who said this?” “Who said that?” “All right, you’ll stay there for another few minutes.” And I’d just walk past and say, “Leave it, Tony.” One day I came back and he was still at it, so I said again, “Leave it, Tony.” By this time Tony was red in the face. And in the finish, I said “Get out, I’ll take over.” And so he walked out — and I’ve never seen him since.’

  Small wonder. ‘There was no induction, no training, no nothing,’ agreed Denis McLeod, a housemaster until 1986. McLeod smiled thinly at the memory of his first day on the job in the spring of 1977. Arriving at Riverside Drive after lunch, he had just two hours to be shown around the place and figure out the ropes. ‘Then it was three o’clock, when the kids came back from school, and they were standing in front of me, and I’m thinking, What the fuck am I supposed to be doing?’

  McLeod, a former cop, had the kind of background to suss things out, but there were other colleagues, he believes, whose primary qualification for being there had been turning up to a job interview at the right time. ‘If there were all sorts of strange things that were going on at that time,’ he said, ‘it may have been because there were some strange people there at times, people who usually just came in off the street. And bang, that was it … you would suddenly be looking after 40-odd kids. And that’s why control became a very important thing for some of them. Their whole regime was controlled by keys. Keys to open this, keys to unlock that. Everything was centred around the key … within a managerial system that kind of operated as a head-prefect type thing with a subservient staff. But you can only work things that way for so long. Things were bound to happen.’

  NIGHT TRAIN

  First cell, first love. For as long as men have locked each other in fortified rooms, artists have conjured with the experience’s romantic potential. Some of the great Russian writers dined out on it for decades. At least one German pastor fashioned a deeply affecting theology out of it. The tall, evil, graceful, bright-eyed, black revolutionary writer George Jackson, sent down to Soledad Prison in 1960 for a minor offence and then later to San Quentin, made it seem positively cool.

  Plenty of boxers have spent time inside too. Often their incarcerations — or in Ali’s case, threatened incarceration — have turned out to be pivotal moments in their development. But not if you’re a kid.

  According to the official literature, the modern use of dedicated cells, or ‘secure units’, in juvenile correctional facilities dates back to the 1950s, when they were instituted in response to the number of absconding children who seemed to be running away from the ‘homes’ nearly as fast as the government could build them.

  But a closer reading of the historical record shows the practice found favour much earlier in the piece. Similar units known as ‘detention yards’ — open-air cages designed for the containment of what the parliamentary record of the time refers to as ‘the hardened offenders and defectives of a low type’ — were first put to use by the education department in 1903. These enclosures were designed in response to ‘a recognition of the absolute necessity for exceptional treatment of a number of boys who might be termed “incorrigibles” … who are at all times and under all conditions a source of contamination’ to other inmates. The pens usually consisted of a piece of ground enclosed by a high fence with a portion covered over like a shed, presumably for use in wet weather, under which ‘the delinquents do such work as is possible … and they are subjected to, and thoroughly need, very strict discipline’.

  Each yard had its special attendant who would accompany the imprisoned boys out for meals in the shared eating space. The period of confinement would last for anything from a few hours to 17 months. The authorities seemed to have liked it as much as their wards hated it. As they used to say at the Burnham school, ‘no stronger proof’ could be adduced of the success of the treatment than its massive unpopularity among the boys.

  Nor did they like it at Epuni, where even some of the more initially demure inmates were known to slip out of character as soon as the metal doors were shut behind them. The institution’s notebooks abound with stories of kids freaking out, banging their heads against the wall until they bled, falling on the floor and assuming a foetal position for hours on end, or screaming every time they heard a sudden noise. According to one government survey conducted years later, as many as 90 per cent of suicide attempts in all residences at the time occurred in the ‘secure’ blocks.

  In the early days Epuni had made do with a couple of rooms that were relatively secured, with thicker glass and a pine-edge ceiling. Alas, one of the kids hit on the idea of standing on a tallboy and pushing his head through the ceiling, clambering onto the roof and making off. After one too many such escapes the department decided something more secure was required, and in 1968 called in the concrete layers. The resultant yard, located at the end of the institution’s junior wing, was indeed a proper cellblock, complete with reinforced doors, concrete walls and armoured windows in each of the four tiny rooms, two on either side of a small passageway that was always kept lit, surrounded on the outside by another security barrier in the unlikely event that somebody managed to break out of a cell.

  At the end of the cellblock was a larger cell, or activities room, where the boys would be allowed for brief periods of silent exercise. So much silence. So few books. Boys who had been placed in the unit for absconding, in particular, wo
uld not be allowed to read any literature until their second day, ostensibly because they were said to be in need of sleep, but possibly as a way for them to better meditate on their transgressions.

  Among the other rigidly enforced rules was a ban on other boys attempting to communicate with their cell-bound fellows, a prohibition that introduced some fear but also a kind of mystique for those stuck inside, who were also forbidden to communicate with the boys who brought in the meals on a metal trolley, which was typically unloaded and placed on top of a plastic toilet seat which served as a makeshift table.

  Even staff members were urged to communicate wherever possible using only nods and gestures. Thus, the only sounds usually to be heard tended to be the jingling of keys, the unlocking of doors, and perhaps the music of James Brown & The Famous Flames.

  Epuni saw itself as simply working as best it could to get its kids to stay put. Besides, it was not as if it was the only institution to have reached this conclusion. Soon enough, without any overall policy guiding them, most of the other youth facilities had followed suit. By the 1970s 14 out of the country’s 21 youth facilities operated a ‘secure’ unit of some description, ranging in size from two to 19 cells and totalling 98 overall. Over the course of any given year during this time the cells held around 2500 wards, typically for a period of up to a few days but in some cases for up to a month.

  Some institutions made greater use of this system than others. Kohitere, for example, kept boys locked up for an average of 11.7 days, while girls admitted to places such as Kingslea tended to stay longer, in at least one case for up to 10 weeks, partly because of what was seen as the unusual trauma involved in admitting females. Nor was the prospect of getting pasted down for lice the worst experience associated with the cellblocks. At the Bollard Girls’ Home in Auckland, for instance, new admissions — without exception and irrespective of age — also underwent examinations for STDs, a procedure dating back to the industrial schools of the early 1900s based on an assumption — and a blatant double standard when compared to boys — that sexual activity had something to do with the girls’ admission.

  At Bollard the girls were stripped, given dressing gowns and taken to the residence’s nursing clinic for a vaginal examination. ‘Mick Jagger’, they called it. These examinations were conducted with the child in foot stirrups or restrained by staff members. Many girls found the experience upsetting. According to Lorraine Katterns, a social worker at the institution, they would often act up after they were taken back to the cellblock, leading in turn to other deprivations, including the confiscation of the girl’s mattress, leaving her to sleep on the floor, or longer time in the cells.

  And yet, from the department’s point of view, the practice enjoyed the support of the people who counted. Law enforcement officials were okay with it. Judges sometimes went as far as stipulating that wards be kept in the secured facilities for appreciable periods, although this would create its own problems given that the facilities had never been designed with longer stays in mind. Most social workers and various mental-health experts didn’t see any problem with it, either, and even those who had reservations tended to be ambivalent at worst. The same appeared to be true of the general public.

  After all, as the department’s director-general would sometimes remind listeners rhetorically, how else were these youngsters ever to be defused, treated, evaluated and even protected from themselves? All new admissions tended to be ‘generally aggressive and/or bewildered, high on adrenalin, resistant to being there and far from in tune with the aims of the institution’, Mackay argued in one public statement.

  ‘While they are in the secure they are given a chance to eat and sleep on a regular basis, something they have probably been missing for some time, get close individual attention from the Attendant who is always there, and generally have the opportunity to think about why they are in this predicament. In other words they are faced with the reality of the cause and effect of their behaviour … As in general social welfare work, the punishment motive is non-existent as far as the institution itself is concerned.’

  Epuni’s principal agreed. ‘If there were problems with the boys,’ Howe later explained, ‘we might use the secure unit for a day, or two days, or even for a three-day period. And yes, that went on for quite some time. Then at the latter stage, the number of offences seemed to be on the increase with the kids. We were getting assaults, drugs and car conversions and burglaries and so on. So I used to admit them to the secure unit, and my secure staff had the job of discussing these issues with them. I would usually pop in at least once a day, as well, and spend a wee bit of time having a chat to the various boys. I would expect to hear from the staff within a day or so what they thought. “Do we keep this lad in here any longer then?” I’d ask. “Is he responding? Is he showing an interest in coming out and staying put?”

  ‘And so forth. They had the task of discussing the future, the sorts of behaviour that we expected in the Home, and that this was an experience as far as they were concerned. The first time having a door shut on them without a door handle or a key by which to get out, a point was sort of brought home to them where they now were. You know, trying a bit of the old tough-love thing if you like, to a certain extent. And then we would bring him to the open institution to take part in the group we had there.’

  ONLY MUCH LATER WOULD THE MINISTRY OF SOCIAL Development acknowledge that — with the exception of the odd arrival who might have been in a genuinely agitated state and in clear need of pacifying — this perceived solution almost certainly exacerbated the problems it was intended to address. What’s more, the increased numbers of inmates being shipped to ‘secure’ often led to overcrowding in a wing supervised by a staff who were more often than not untrained.

  It has been speculated that the units were always as much a response to the inability of these staff to cope with the everyday routines and regulations of the homes as fulfilling any serious purpose. From as early as 1974 the department was issuing communiqués to staff reminding them that children in cells were entitled to daily showers, adequate clothing and food, and regular visits, stipulations that were not only fitfully followed at best but extraordinary insofar as they suggested that the government was entrusting some of the country’s most vulnerable young lives to the care of individuals who might be unmindful of such requirements.

  ‘Close custody’ — the preferred locution — was supposed to be terminated as soon as the ‘emergency period’ had passed and the child’s behaviour was deemed to be stable. But what constituted an emergency period? A night? Three days? A fortnight? Not even the voluminous manuals shed much light on the question.

  Despite its wards’ kaleidoscopic variety of backgrounds, Epuni doggedly kept to the practice of incarcerating virtually all newcomers, regardless of age, mental state or their actual reason for being admitted. At the same time the secure wing lacked even a full-time staff presence, with the unit being checked on every half-hour or so by an attendant working in the main building.

  The boys were only ever allowed out of their cells, briefly, to complete an exercise regime consisting of press-ups or running on the spot, or else being assigned to cleaning the unit, before being shunted back inside, a monotonous routine only broken by the arrival of meals brought in on trays and served with plastic cutlery.

  Administrators at Epuni could at least have argued that their cellblock was more attractive than those in operation at some of the other youth centres. At Weymouth, a long-term girls’ institution that had been established during the early 1970s in South Auckland, for instance, not only was there a 19-bed cellblock but the back and front of the rest of the grounds were also ringed with a three-metre-high barbed-wire fence. Marek Powierza, the principal at Weymouth, used to argue that the fence was a comforting touch for the institution’s wards because it gave them a sense of freedom, in that so long as they were enclosed within it they did not need to be locked up in the cells.

  Others had a different vi
ew of what the experience might be doing to the wards, or at least those who managed to break out. Speaking to the first of several inquiries into the practice, in 1977, a Mrs Lyall shared the story of discovering a boy who had somehow managed to escape from ‘secure’ and hide himself in her backyard. The child, she said:

  was like a cringing animal. He was also bleeding from barbed wire scratches he got escaping, and soaking wet. He said, ‘Don’t let those men get me.’ ‘What men?’ ‘Those men chasing me.’ He was covered in bruises, old and new ones. The muscles of his legs were knotted from PT. If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have believed it. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts.

  I bathed him and put him to bed. It was really shocking. He wouldn’t let me put sticking plaster on the cuts because he said they’d just pull it off. We didn’t know what to do so we called the police.

  They took him back to the Home, wrapped in a blanket — I had thrown his clothes away. He cried and held on to us, and we promised to go and see him. I felt like Judas. But we were never allowed to go and see him or take him out, we could only write to him. In the end a lady from Social Welfare rang and said he’d been shifted. They blocked all contact. You’d think they would welcome somebody taking an interest in a child and wanting to develop a relationship.