1 MELLOW MUSIC What if we took a baby and watched everything that happened to it from birth to grave? If we examined every aspect of its life, looked at everything that happened to them and everything that made them who they are? Their physical development, their personality ` their emotional ups and downs, criminal convictions, relationships, illnesses, highlights and heartbreaks. Then imagine if we did that for and entire city. Perhaps we could uncover what it is that really makes us who we are. That experiment has already begun. In 1972, the Dunedin Medical School embarked on the ultimate nature vs nurture test. They decided to take every child born in the city that year and follow them for life. For 40 years scientists have probed every nook and cranny of their existence. READS: A. Their medical history, their temperament, their genes. Their private lives, successes, failures ` the lot. How many times have you sold hard drugs, like heroin, cocaine or LSD? The experiment is called the Dunedin study and its subjects are now the thousand most-studied people in the world. And they've become the richest source of information on what really makes us who we are. My first time at court, we'd been driving around with a car full of loot from burglaries. And then the police had pulled us over and didn't believe our story that some hitch-hikers had left a lot of stuff in the car when they got out. (LAUGHS) And then I started robbing, uh, service stations once they were closed, dedicated drug dealing. So, this was like me being bad amongst bad people. This was the ultimate in excitement. The MO was just one big adventure. I was in a hot car and I'm the first one to get into the house. I remember getting pushed up and, yeah, fuck, my heart was beating. You know` You know once th` Once they catch me, I'm over. And, um` And you just think, 'Wow.' Paul and Gary are convicted criminals. Both have committed serious crimes as teenagers and both have spent long periods in jail. But there are fundamental differences in the pattern of their offending and the likely long-term outcome for their lives. MELLOW MUSIC As improbable as it may seem, one of these men could've been identified as a future criminal as far back as kindergarten, and the other could have been turned around as a teenager. MELLOW MUSIC Terrie Moffitt is a lead researcher in the Dunedin Study. Her research targets the cause of crime and the development of criminal behaviour in young people. Given that children start out full of innocence and full of happiness, how do people, along the way, get sidetracked off into breaking the law, becoming addicted to` to drugs? I guess I'm interested in why people turn out poorly, more poorly than` than they started. Moffitt is particularly interested in why teenagers run off the rails and what happens to them when they become adults. She spent her own teenage years here, in rural North Carolina. When I was a teenager, everybody had to go to church, everybody went to church, but church was a place that teenagers used wisely to plot all the trouble we were going to get up to as soon as we could get out of the service and into our cars and away from the grown-ups. So, it was a good meeting point for planning your no-goods that you would do later. So, what we did was get together and drag race on roads in the country and drink heavily and drink-drive and cannabis-using. Some people went on to lives of crime and ended up in prison ` some of my friends ` and the rest of us went away to university and took a different path. Moffitt's own path led to an academic career studying psychology and, in particular, the causes of juvenile delinquency. In 1984 she joined the staff of the Dunedin Study, which had been following a thousand teenagers from the say they were born. I remember my first moment of shock and horror, this is going to sound silly now, but I had travelled all the way around the world to study young people's involvement in crime and the first thing I saw when I got to Dunedin was everyone sitting their milk bottles out on the stoop with money on top, for the milkman to pick up in the morning. (LAUGHS) And the idea that that cash would sit there on the stoop all night and not be taken ` I thought to myself, 'Oh my gosh, I've made a terrible mistake.' (LAUGHS) Uh, but it turns out that there were quite a b` a few kids in the study stealing that milk money and doing worse. (LAUGHS) So` So I didn't make a mistake. MELLOW MUSIC The boys in the Dunedin Study were only 13 when Moffitt joined, but a small number were already breaking the law. Wondering how long the boys had been offending, Moffitt went back through the records and checked the reports for the same boys when they were just 3, looking for earlier problems, and she began to see a pattern. Research workers at the time were asked what it was like to work with this child and they wrote down that this was a very difficult child to work with. The child was naughty and would run around the room and jump on the furniture and trying a task, if it became at all frustrating, they would throw it over and give it up. So it was more a general style that the child showed when asked to do anything the slightest bit effortful. Um, that just didn't appeal to these 3-year-olds. The difficult toddlers were bullies and disliked by other children and adults. But perhaps the most remarkable thing of all was the behaviour the study observed in those 3-year-olds accurately predicted criminal offending decades later as adults. Moffitt had found a way to spot future criminals in kindergarten. 1 ENGINE REVS, TYRES SCREECH TYRES SCREECH FUNKY MUSIC Teenage years are turbulent, exciting times. With the changes in adolescent bodies can come equally dramatic shifts in mood, behaviour and interests. But sometimes those interests and activities become antisocial. The Dunedin Study wanted to know if it could predict which teenagers would go off track and why. TYRES SCREECH Professor Terrie Moffitt thought she had the answer. She'd identified a group of young children who had been displaying antisocial tendencies back in kindergarten. They started hitting other children and biting other children and kicking other children and stealing other children's toys when they were, you know, as young as` as, uh, 2 or 3. Uh, and they've carried on with antisocial behaviour. ENGINES REV As Moffitt tracked study members into adolescence, she expected to see the kids who'd been troublesome toddlers become the bulk of teenage offenders. But that's not what happened. When study members reached 15, the ranks of delinquents increased dramatically. Large numbers of teens, with no previous history of trouble, started fighting, stealing and other antisocial activities. And so I had to think, why are so many young people taking up delinquent offending in the middle of adolescence but without any kind of a childhood history of any kind of signs that would've` have led us to suspect there was something wrong? But it just came out of the blue. Paul and Gary were two of those teenagers. I was a very typical teenager. You know, knew better than my parents. Whatever was going on, I was into it. Alcohol and partying and, you know, stealing alcohol from our parents and then progressing on to stealing alcohol from strangers and burglaries, those sorts of things. You know, it was just super exciting. I'd do, you know, all sorts. Just mischief. Drugs, speed or marijuana. Breaking into cars and doing house burglaries, yeah. It's just one big adventure, you know? And you're not thinking consequential, you know? I knew I was having a good time, so I thought that everyone else was just, um, you know, some kind of chump, I suppose, basically. And it wasn't just a few isolated teens who were acting up. When they're teenagers, they get in trouble in groups. Like a team sport, you know, an element of competition against your friends ` who can do the worst things. Um, sensation-seeking, risk-taking. Preference of danger over boredom. The Dunedin Study found by the age of 21, 60% of males had stolen property or money. TRANQUIL MUSIC 75% had been involved in some kind of violence. TRANQUIL MUSIC And almost 90% had abused drugs or alcohol. These figures were far higher than expected. The study revealed that teenage offending is the norm, not the exception. The majority have engaged at some time, in some form of behaviour which could have led to prosecution. So you can no longer think of this as just a curious, deviant group. But why would well-behaved kids suddenly become antisocial? Around the time of puberty, there's an increase in sensation-seeking and novelty-seeking and reward-seeking. Um, and` And this is natural and normative and it` it impels individuals toward, um, more exciting behaviours. CROWD CHEERS This thirst for excitement and recklessness is reflected in accident statistics. Teens between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times more likely to be involved in a car crash. And if other teenagers are in the car, the risk of the crash being fatal doubles. Other types of accident follow the same pattern, including drownings. Even though adolescents presumably are a lot stronger, um, and better swimmers, it's because they take more chances. Um, so, we think that it has to do with what's going on in the brain during adolescence. Adolescent brains are a work in progress. They're being rewired and restructured. The changes start at the back of the brain. The parts of the brain responsible for judgement and self-control, at the front, come last. This makes teenagers particularly prone to risky and reckless behaviour. They focus on the present and fail to think about possible long-term consequences. Many delinquent teenagers in the study left school early. And while this looked like a sign of maturity, it only made it easier for them to get into more trouble. I thought, 'You've got all these people who go and waste their time getting educated and getting jobs 'so they can slug their guts out, whereas here's this lifestyle I have, 'where I do what the fuck I want, when I want, and, you know, 'have all this excitement and enjoyment that goes with it ` and the money as well.' I was making what would've been a lot of money for someone that age. I had my own business dealing marijuana out of a flat. I was able to sustain quite an expensive drug habit as well. I did see myself as a criminal at this point, but I didn't see that as anything that was bad. Burglaries were paying quite well then. And, you know, the whole day's yours. Go out for a couple hours in the evening, you know. And, on a` on a` Choose one night if you want to. In one night, you can survive. Or stay home with my girlfriend, you know. At 19 years of age, Paul was a full-time criminal and a drug addict. His life was falling apart. His mother died of cancer. Paul's response was to go looking for his drug dealer. The deal went horribly wrong. He attempted to leverage the situation to watch myself and my partner have sex first, and then he made a sexual advance at me. My response to that was to, um, basically lose the plot. Uh, he was bigger and stronger than me, though, so that wasn't really going in my favour. So my girlfriend, who was there at the time, then passed me a baseball bat. I beat him to death. Uh, which was completely unnecessary. You know, at one point there he had stopped trying to attack me and was trying to get out of there. But, yeah. That's the decision I made at the time. My neighbour's kids had heard banging and they thought that a domestic assault was going on. So, I was literally apprehended at the scene with him there, dead. EERIE MUSIC UPBEAT MUSIC What does a sieve and most NZ homes have in common? Hundreds of tiny holes. Like water streaming through a sieve, heat streams out of houses through holes and gaps in ceilings, walls, floors and windows. Heat always finds places to escape. Add it up, and it's like having a hole this big in your wall. You can turn up the heating, but you'll just be burning money. So trap heat in with effective insulation in ceilings, walls and floors and draught-proof doors and windows. Consider curtains that go right to the floor. Here's a tip ` drawing curtains before the dark retains the heat from the day. A properly insulated house is like having a thermal blanket wrapped around your home, trapping heat in, keeping it warm and comfortable. If we all made a small effort all the time, we could save the country over $100 million in energy each year. I'll see you next time. 1 The Dunedin Study established that most teenagers break the law. And every parent's worst nightmare is that their wayward teen will end up in jail. Your welcome to prison in NZ is quite an experience. Paul Woods was 19 when he first went to jail. You're walking through this long wing when you get there, and all you see are all these eyes in these judas holes, in these peepholes, looking out at you. ROWDY CROWD JEERS And you have people kicking these big steel doors, going, 'Hang yourself! Kill yourself! I'm going to fucking get you tomorrow!' You know, this is your welcome, this is your welcome to prison. Yeah, it's quite an experience. So, this guy he's from the agg and robbery and, um` Yeah, there was three of them involved and this guy's one of them. Constables Aaron Marsters and Jason Kaulima work in a police Youth Action Team, a specialist unit dedicated to youth crime. They deal with teenagers already in trouble with the law and at risk of further offending. This is one of our little problem streets. Kids as young as 4, 5, up to 17, just hanging out in the street in the middle of the night. So we had to monitor this street pretty frequently during our shifts. They're only too familiar with the Dunedin Study's findings that crime is common among teenagers. He was with a few other boys and they all went out and burgled a property as well as broke into some cars. But the Dunedin results revealed something else. As teenage offenders get older, they separate into two very distinct groups. One of the boys he was with is an 18-year-old and he seems to be the ringleader, so these guys were basically just following him. There are a couple of different kinds of people who get in trouble with the law. Uh, there's the kind of person who's basically a decent good person but is curious and lively and wants to try everything, and during the time when they're a teenager, um, they get involved in, um, delinquent acts and drug use as part of that exploring what life's all about. And then there's the other sort ` people who started out being violent and aggressive and bullying other children as early as they could walk and are still doing it now in their late 30s and probably will go on and become increasingly involved with the law and have serious careers of crime. They don't come around too often. Um, but over my time I have had, um, a handful of kids that are ` obviously are adults now ` and are inside. Um, it's just been hard to get those ones to engage. They don't listen to us, they don't listen to their parents, and the ones that I used to deal with when I first started are in prison now. So can't save them all. The group of teenagers who keep on offending as adults were the same children Moffitt had identified as potential criminals back in kindergarten. So he's breaching, then. Tell him we're going to have to come back and lock him up. The Dunedin Study calls them life course persistent offenders. Each new phase of life they enter, uh, they pick up whatever is antisocial that you could do at the phase of life. Uh, so, when they learn to drive, they start to steal cars. When they get a job, they, uh, embezzle money out of till. When they get a girlfriend, they beat her. Um, so they seem` seem to transfer their antisocial style, uh, right across the life course. By the time they're 9, they're doing a bit of amateur break and enter. Uh, by the time they're 13, they're nicking cars, and by the time they're 15, they're beating up people and, uh` and worse. By 18, they end up in jail. So they've been naughty in various ways, seriously bad, from the very b` uh, get-go. TRANQUIL MUSIC Gary would be categorised by the Dunedin Study as a classic life-course persistent offender. Um, I'm up to about, like, 220 convictions. The charges vary from, basically, shoplifting, but as I got older, about 16, 17, I started stealing cars. Right through to armed robbery to, yeah, pretty much been everywhere. I've done probably, um, about 16.4 years of my life in jail ` all my sentences. And that's solid jail time. When you look at it, you know, there's been now life out here, because the sentences say it all, you know. But if you know what to look for, the signs were there way back even in kindergarten. They start off, uh, pretty rambunctious and naughty. I mean, these are the kids that have real scraps in the sandpit. I was always disruptive and, um, loud. Probably attention-seeking, they would call it. Sometimes I'd act like a clown. And then other extremes. This would be, like, in primary. Um, then roaming around with other guys, and I could be, like, um, yeah, picking on people, and, yeah. I was very disruptive. Yeah, um, a ratbag. Just a` Just a` A very quite mischief. Yeah, just disruptive. I found it hard` hard to focus on anything for a long time. Life-course persistent offenders are not just criminals; they're also far more likely to end up on a benefit and addicted to drugs. And as they get older, their crimes become more serious. Gary went all the way from petty theft as a kid to armed robbery with a shotgun as an adult. Takes a special confidence with a gun to manhandle someone. You know, people freak out. I had a lady cowered over going like this with the keys. You know, and I'm just saying, 'Hey, everything's all right. Good on ya. Just keep calm.' There was a person watching. I saw a refection of him in the mirror. And I think he must've seen me on the reflection standing there with a balaclava. And that's when I produced it and just brandished it, you know? And everyone just went back in and any hero was gone ` but there was no heroes ` but it just to` Yeah, cos I thought, 'Fuck, some <BLEEP> might rush me.' Or, you know? And` But it was clear. Gary's jewellery store robbery went wrong. He was caught and sent to jail for seven years. But most teen offenders aren't like Gary. The majority of delinquent teenagers are destined to stop offending by the time they're in their mid-20s and go on to become ordinary citizens. The Dunedin Study calls these adolescent limited offenders. These were the ordinary, healthy, happy teenagers just acting out a bit, getting in a bit of trouble, um, but they did not have those, uh, difficult, uh, temperaments or` or verbal skill problems. Uh, they were just ordinary teenagers. What are you guys up to? We're just chilling, eh. Oh yeah. You're not smoking anything you're not supposed to? Given the right circumstances, most adolescent limited offenders come right of their own accord. You guys own these cars, eh? Unless they're already too deeply embedded in a criminal lifestyle. Three things in particular make it hard for a teenager to change ` drugs, gangs and jail. Paul is an example of an adolescent limited offender but now stuck in prison for a crime he committed as a teenager and coming to a realisation. I was confronted with the idea that I was not the baddest man on the planet and where I saw what was really required to, sort of, have that, yeah, I dunno, the level of mean streak or just ruthlessness. Here was in a situation with people who were genuinely capable of extreme violence. But not only that, with a lot of them who really revelled in it and, uh, enjoyed it. And I realised, you know, hey, this wasn't me. New tyres ` there are many types. Some were designed for performance in the wet, some will save you fuel, and some cost more than others. So how do you choose? Ask about Energywise-approved tyres. They meet Energywise criteria for both fuel efficiency and braking in the wet, so you know they'll save you fuel and money... and perform when safety really counts. Find fuel-efficient tyres for your car at energywise.govt.nz 1 FUNKY MUSIC It's not just teenage boys that run off the rails. Teenage girls also offend. The Dunedin Study discovered that 91% of girls have committed some form of delinquent or illegal behaviour before they're 21. (LAUGHS) Steal clothes and smoking dope. Um, drinking alcohol, wagging, beating people up. It was like an adrenaline rush when I did things that were criminal. Cos I knew that` I knew they were wrong and I was, like, I` I was brought to know things that were wrong or right. But I didn't` I didn't wanna listen. 37 minutes till liquor ban I've gotta drink this. (LAUGHS) < (LAUGHS) Potoz King was 13 when she first got into trouble with the police. She ran away from home and started living on the streets with other teenagers. Sniffing glue, taking drugs, shoplifting, even holding up small stores. I, like, dressed up in boys clothes and put a bandana over my face and walked in with a bag and a knife and told her to put all the money in the bag. I` I wasn't going to stab her or anything. I wouldn't go that far, but, yeah, I was just scaring her, I suppose. She put all the money in the bag and I took off. All over the world, there are differences between male and female offenders. Girls typically run off the rails earlier than boys. The girls who had puberty early, uh, were biologically adult in their appearance and had an attractive figure and, uh, looked as if they might be 17 when they were still really 13 and they the emotional, uh, and cognitive immaturity of a 13-year-old. So they were especially vulnerable. Good looking girls who aren't very grown-up yet. Uh, and those got in a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble, um, at that age. And this is a process that really doesn't apply to boys at all. Adolescence is also when many girls first start having sex. And the Dunedin Study discovered something about the kinds of partner that young women are attracted to. People tended to choose someone with a personality that was very like their own. If they were a highly conscientious person, their partner would be also highly conscientious. If they were very sensation-seeking, into thrills and danger and risk-taking, so was their partner. Down to the level of even reading disability. We thought if one partner couldn't read, they would choose a partner who could read because that would help the couple negotiate life better. But they tended to be well-matched on their level of, uh, reading achievement. This is not a problem in itself. But the Dunedin Study found that delinquent women seek out equally antisocial men. Men who leave school early, are poor readers and have criminal records. I don't think I've really been with a guy that's good. Like, not in` hasn't been in trouble. I mean, all the boyfriends that I've had have all` have been in trouble with the police. For most teenage girls, delinquency will just be a passing phase. However, one thing in particular makes it hard for girls to move on. I got pregnant at 16. When he found out that I was pregnant, he disowned me and the baby and said it wasn't his and, you know, he didn't want nothing to do with me or the baby. After having him I moved out to caravan park and` where my best friend was. I just wanted to be young. I` I wanted to do what they were all doing. Right throughout the pregnancy, I did everything. I did drugs, I did alcohol, I did glue, I did I` substances that w` you're not even supposed to do when you're pregnant. But I just wanted to be young. I wanted to live my life as someone young. I wanted to be a teenager and I didn't want to grow up. The women who have been involved in antisocial behaviour, their outcomes have to do with how they're running their homes, their families and taking care of their children. They most likely got pregnant too young, uh, they're now stuck being a solo mother, they haven't got very much money, they missed out on education, they may have developed an addiction along the way, um, perhaps to alcohol, and they're having difficulty giving their children a good life. Lunchtime is any time. Any time I feel hungry. Potoz has five children. She no longer lives on the street and has a regular partner who she shares an apartment with. But the Dunedin finding that antisocial people chose a partner much like themselves makes for a turbulent relationship at times. There is this kind of a toxic, if you will, combination of personality traits, um, which is characterised by a great deal of neuroticism and lack of agreeableness, if you will ` or disagreeableness. So these are people who, um, we think of being characterised by a good deal of negative, uh, emotionality. Dishes get smashed, food doesn't get cooked (LAUGHS), he ends up leaving the house and, yeah, after we have a fight or something or I've gone and punched him up for` cos I haven't got my food.(LAUGHS) And what happens to these people once they get into a relationship is that that toxic element of` of high neuroticism and` and high disagreeableness, um, that toxic blend, um, is highly predictive of, um, conflict in a relationship, um, of, um, unhappiness in a relationship, but importantly also of physical violence in a relationship. I've got 2005. The Dunedin Study has come to a highly controversial conclusion about domestic violence. It found that women hit men just as often as men hit women. We asked questions like, you know, 'Have you hit your partner? Have you thrown your partner across the room? 'Have you used a knife on your partner?' And I thought, 'We're wasting our time asking these questions of the girls.' But they said yes to them. And they said yes to them in the same numbers that the boys did. How many times in the last year have you been so angry that you attacked them with a weapon? The girls thought it was quite all right to hit their partner. They thought nobody would care, they thought their parents wouldn't disapprove, they thought the police would not come if anyone called them, and they thought they wouldn't injure anybody. Um, but the behaviours were the same. Women hit their men too. I know I can admit that cos I` I do it. I've done it. I'll spaz out and just do something mental and try and stab them and throw` throw things up or smash the house up. When this finding first came out, it was flat rejected by most feminist criminologists, so we really had difficulty getting those papers published. Uh, even after the papers were published, uh, we were never invited to present the findings at any conferences. Uh, it was one of the most difficult parts of the research to get it out there. Oh, it's ruffled feathers, without doubt. I mean, there are people who just don't believe it. Uh, they think that men perpetrate the vast majority of the violence. Uh, and that women, if at all, are just defending themselves if they, uh, engage in violent behaviour. That's not what our data say. For something lame as, I stood on the bed to punch him in the face and he grabbed me by the feet, spun me over and, like, punched me in the bum. And I rang the cops on him and he stood outside the door and, like, waited for the cops to turn up. Yeah, he got done for male assaults female and got sentenced. It's been shown over and over again that when a couple are fighting and fighting quite mutually and well-matched, when the police come, the police assume that the woman is the victim and the man is the assailant. And I think it's a wide-spread assumption, but over and over and over the Dunedin Study members have told us in many cases the couple fights, usually they get drunk, they fight, they hit each other, they knock each other down, um, and, uh` and in their view it's mutual. Tahi, rua, toru, yeah. Speeding fine $15. Oh, you've gotta pay the middle $15, son. One of those? Give me a $20. Although controversial, the Dunedin findings have since been backed up by studies in the United States, Britain, Canada, Israel and Korea. Although women and men are just as likely to hit each other, there is one significant difference. When men hit women, women are more likely to end up in hospital. You're in jail, mate. No 200 for you, bro. The other thing that I am always struck by in this regard is that, uh, whilst men can hit harder, uh, women, adult women, can hit very hard when the, uh` the victim is a child. 1 TENSE MUSIC The Dunedin Study's discovery that there are two types of adolescent offender is now accepted all over the developed world. In which case, what is the best thing to do when we catch teenagers breaking the law? You really must ask yourself when you see a teenager whose come before the courts, which path are they on? Because the teenager whose going to grow out of it naturally, you wouldn't want to give them a prison record. That would stop them getting a job and it would actually retard their natural desistence from crime. Teen offenders sent to juvenile prison are far more likely to be arrested as adults than teens who committed similar offences but who weren't sent to jail. The NZ justice system recognises this fact and gives youth offenders a chance to get their act together. They're just good kids who have done some really dumb things. Um, spur of the moment decisions. Tonight, the police Youth Action Squad are out enforcing curfews on teen offenders. They make random checks making sure they're at home at the times the court says they should be. What's going on? Where have you been? I've actually just been under the house kicking back, brother. Really? Who does that? The majority of adolescent limited offenders will turn around given the right circumstances. I will warn you now that if Mum doesn't know where you are, I will breach you. The Youth Action Squad enforces structure and boundaries aimed at keeping at-risk teens on the straight and narrow, allowing their brains time to mature. If you can turn a couple of kids around, that's just one person later on that we have to deal with later on in life. It's` It's quite satisfying. It's more rewarding, eh? Yeah, yeah. It's more rewarding. But not every country's legal system makes a distinction between adults and teens. In the United States, adolescent offenders have historically been treated the same as grown-ups. Over time, the justice system became increasingly punitive and children sometimes received harsh adult sentences. It had gotten to the point that young people who committed a violent offence could be waived forward to adult court and given any sentence that and adult could be given, which included life imprisonment and the death penalty. Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death for a murder he committed as a 17-year-old. Simmons' defence team called Professor Laurence Steinberg as an expert witness. Should we lock somebody up and throw away the key for something that he did when he was an adolescent? Adolescents are less able to stop themselves from following their impulses. Um, and the ability to plan and think ahead and regulate our emotions and behaviour increases steadily from pre-adolescence into, um, adulthood. Steinberg went to the US Supreme Court and argued that teenagers should be treated differently to adults. We referenced the Dunedin Study as providing evidence that 95% of all people who commit offences as juveniles don't go on to become adult criminals. So there isn't any need to impose a life sentence on somebody for something that he did as an adolescent. The US Supreme Court agreed. In 2010 the court ruled that it was no longer legal to execute adolescents in the United States. That decision moved 72 teen offenders off death row, including Christopher Simmons. It's a great example of how studies like the Dunedin Study can actually influence law and social policy. It's one of those real-world outcomes. It makes a huge difference. I mean, killing a young person, uh, by that state? It's` It's pretty abhorrent. We tend to just work away on the science, but our hope is it will help young people, and, in this case, I think it really did. Paul Woods paid the price for his teenage offending. He served 10 years in jail. He's been free for seven years and is a changed man. He started a psychology degree in prison, and this led to a doctorate and a successful consulting business. You got a plan B? Um, the... He specialises in leadership. He has a partner and they're now expecting their first child. Oh, I just feel so privileged to be in a position where I can look to create a really positive life for someone else, for, you know` for my son-to-be and` and be a real positive role model and influence for him in the same way that my father was. Hopefully, though` hopefully keep him away from, you know, the type of peer group that I ended up gravitating towards, who would provide poor examples. Yeah, it seems to be that` that, uh, getting the privileges of and responsibilities of adulthood is what leads kids to give up delinquent behaviour. So it starts to become a liability. They start to have a stake in conformity and so slowly, slowly they give up the antisocial lifestyle for the conventional lifestyle. And the irony, of course, is that who I wanna be in life and` and the legacy I wanna leave behind is at the complete opposite of who I started out thinking I was. Paul Woods has show it's possible to turn an adolescent limited offender's life around. But it's a lot harder for a life-course persistent offender. Just recently, you know, 40-years-old and I'm bleating` I got, like, six cops around me and I've already conceded to them my arrest, about to put a handcuff on and, uh, I'm bolting, you know? And I'm leaving them in the dust. Given 10% of criminals are responsible for 50% of all crime, is it possible to do something about hard-core life persistent offenders? I think the answer is it's very difficult but probably not impossible. Uh, but more importantly, um, the key is prevention rather than treatment. A lot of these individuals had been showing signs of misbehaviour and conduct problems maybe even before they've actually gotten in trouble with the law, and by not dealing with that at that moment in time, we may be missing opportunities, to prevent, um, a lifetime of` of chronic antisocial behaviour. The Dunedin Study revealed almost all teens break the law. Some will be caught and some will not. The study's shown there are two types of teen offender ` those that, given the chance, will stop of their own accord and those that will continue to break the law. Society can do a lot to recognise the difference and to give wayward teenagers a chance to grow up rather than automatically sending them to jail. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be punishment for criminal activity. But for most teen offenders, jobs, relationships and families will be reason enough to give up a life of crime. The very good news is that the Dunedin Study has shown that the vast majority of young people who break the law are not a threat to society, will come right, will be fine upstanding citizens, will contribute to the economy, will raise their families, um, beautifully, uh, and we should let them grow out of it. If anything, help them grow out of it. MELLOW MUSIC Captions by Tom Pedlar. Edited by Virginia Philp. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016