YOUTH PROBLEMS IN N.Z.

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28440, 21 November 1957, Page 9

YOUTH PROBLEMS IN N.Z.

J.P.’s Urged To Take An Interest (New Zealand Press Association) NEW PLYMOUTH, Nov. 20. Justices of the peace should interest themselves in the “teenage trouble” in New Zealand, said the president of the New Zealand Federation of Justices of the Peace (Mr D. P. Dinnan) in an address to the Taranaki Justices of the Peace Association. Mr Dinnan asked whether justices could not take some part ;n forming clubs for “these bodgies and widgies.” He said he knew of one man who had collected all the young people lie could find on the streets of Palmerston North and taken them to a hall where they could rock *n’ roll. Soon that hall was not tig enough and a bigger one had to be hired. In a milk bar he had entered recently in Wanganui he had been disgusted with what he had seen, he said. “Do parents realise these youngsters are their charges? Do they ask them where they go at night time—and in the day time?” asked Mr Dinnan. It was the parents’ responsibility, but too many were too busy getting away at the weekends for their own amusement and not caring where their children went. “Let us, as justices, try to do more than our judicial duties,” Mr Dinnan said. “Let us do something to stop these young people having to go to Borstal and other similar institutions.”