The alarming rise in crime among young women is down to "structural issues" with the justice system, says a youth justice advocate.
Yesterday Police Commissioner Mike Bush said the rise "could be driven out of wanting a few minutes of fame" via social media.
But speaking on TVNZ1's Breakfast today, JustSpeak’s Julia Whaipooti’s says "structural issues" are to blame for the rise, not social media.
"We have a really unaddressed structural issues around our growing prison population in the face of decreasing criminal offending."
"It's really clear to us that we need to be addressing the underlying structural issues within out justice system...we know when people enter the prison system the more likely they are to reenter and offend again."
She says we aren't creating safer communities to prevent that from happening.
"This growing prison population whether it's women or men in our justice system is just a symptom of where we've been failing and doing things wrong."
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