THE President just came back from his trip to Australia and New Zealand.

Touted to be a great success, the visit to New Zealand unfortunately did not include the presidential party learning a few things from the Kiwi state’s excellent, First World way of treating young offenders.

People who have studied New Zealand’s system of dealing with child offenders admire it. And yet child welfare advocates are complaining that New Zealand’s jails for “children in conflict with the law” leave much to be desired.

Early this year a report was released by the Independent Police Conduct Authority, the Human Rights Commission and the Children’s Commissioner about youth detention in police cells. Most New Zealanders welcomed the report as good news.

But the New Zealand national advocacy manager for the United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF (the UN body that works for children’s rights, their survival, development and protection) said much still needed to be done in NZ for child offenders.

UNICEF’s Barbara Lambourn said she and her people had always known what the report said: that turning children away from a life of more delinquency, anti-social behavior and criminality depended on how they are treated in the early stages of their delinquency. And putting them in cells only made them angry and drove them to criminality.