Bennett Paula: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bennett Paula: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1440] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I move  
That the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the conclusion of the first reading debate I will move that the bill be referred to the Social Services Committee for consideration. 
Reducing violent serious and repeat offending by young people is a vital element of this Government’s plan to deal with crime in this country. We intend to offer these young people and their families a fresh start in order to turn their lives around and to address the causes of their offending. We need to intervene at the earliest opportunity to safeguard our communities to do what we can to break the crime cycle and to give young offenders the chance to rebuild their lives in a positive way. 
The current system works well for most children and young people who break the law. Police diversion works and our courts have powers to deal effectively with most young people who come before them. Unfortunately a number of serious and persistent young offenders cause significant harm to their victims themselves their families and their communities. Based on police apprehension figures and the number of higher-level orders used by the Youth Court we see that this group of serious young offenders consists of about 1000 children and young people aged between 12 and 16 years. The present system is not effective enough for this group and these Fresh Start initiatives focus specifically on them. 
When it comes to preventing serious and repeat offending there is no simple solution. The factors that lead children and young people to commit serious offences or to embark on a destructive path of repeat offending are many and varied. We need responses based on what we know works and that recognise the developmental needs of growing children and young people. It will take time to ensure that the right providers and Government agencies have the opportunity to upskill and to expand their services and systems to meet these needs. The wrong approach could hurt and harden these young people and exacerbate rather than solve the problems we are trying to address. 
This bill and the Fresh Start range of initiatives will improve the current system by providing tougher but significantly more flexible and effective legislation that gives a greater range of options for responding to serious and persistent offending by children and young people. To begin with the bill widens the jurisdiction of the Youth Court to cover the small group of recidivist 12 and 13-year-olds who are accused of committing serious crime or who commit repeat offences despite the best efforts of police Child Youth and Family and the Family Court. For most children and young people a diversionary approach works well and they are involved with the police only once. This is why we have set a high threshold before those 12 and 13-year-olds would be processed through the Youth Court. 
The bill also ensures that the Youth Court deals with those children in a way that takes their age into account and that protects them from the negative influences of or victimisation by more mature young offenders. The police and the Youth Court will be given the flexibility to decide how to deal with serious offending by these children. If a Youth Court judge decides that it is not in the public interest for the offending to be dealt with in the criminal jurisdiction he or she can refer it to the Family Court. Under our Fresh Start changes the Youth Court will have a wide range of powers available including new and longer orders and programmes. The bill doubles the length of the Youth Court’s highest-end sentences and this will affect about 300 young offenders. Currently one of the most serious sentences presently available to the court is to send a young person to a youth justice residence for a period of 3 months followed by 6 months’ supervision. In practice as long as the offender does not escape or commit more offences while there his or her time in residence will always be reduced to 2 months. This is simply not long enough. It does not send the right message to young offenders about how seriously society views their offending and just as important it does not provide enough time for them to receive the help and support they need to turn their lives around. The bill doubles the length of the sentence to a maximum of 6 months in residence followed by supervision for up to 12 months. The supervision with activity order will also be doubled to a maximum of 6 months which may be followed by up to 6 months’ supervision. 
Many of the young offenders who receive these high-end orders come from backgrounds that may involve chronic alcohol or drug abuse and families that condone antisocial behaviour where negative peer relationships are too often the norm. In order to provide these young people with the best chance to avoid becoming serious adult offenders these Fresh Start changes will require the investment of time and intensive support by the Government and the providers who work with them. It is important that we identify the right people and programmes for these young people. The bill will enable young offenders on supervision with residence orders to undergo activity programmes. Under this amendment military-style activity camps will be introduced. They will provide a small group of young people with the opportunity to move away from a secure residence and into a camp where they can develop life skills personal discipline and self-confidence under the training and control of army or ex-army staff members who have a particular aptitude for working with young people. It will be part of a comprehensive package designed to address the underlying causes of the young person’s offending. 
These longer sentences offer the opportunity for intensive work to be done with the young offender to stop the offender from committing further crimes. Each young offender will be the subject of an individually tailored plan designed to address the underlying causes of his or her offending and to support his or her transition back into the community. The lack of drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes for young offenders in the past has not been good enough. As part of the Fresh Start suite of new sentencing orders introduced by the bill young offenders may where necessary be sentenced to attend and participate in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes for up to 12 months. This will require the strengthening and development of residential or day programmes to respond to the expected increase in demand. 
Many young offenders lack positive adult role models in their families and communities. The bill introduces a mentoring programme order that may be imposed on young offenders for up to 12 months. Mentoring will also be an important part of all the programmes in the Fresh Start package. I hope that through the process of developing the new mentoring order we can have good dialogue across the sector about what high-quality and effective mentoring looks like for the particular young people we are dealing with. 
Some parents have not been held to account for their role in their children’s offending. The bill empowers the Youth Court to make an order requiring parents of young offenders to attend a parenting education programme for a maximum period of 6 months. Such orders may also be made against young offenders who are or are about to become parents. This will help them to become better parents and in reinforcing a sense of responsibility will contribute to their motivation to stop offending. 
The bill also deals with young criminals who keep offending and ignore their community-based orders. It introduces spotlight sentences to empower the Youth Court to actively monitor young people who are serious repeat offenders or who have breached the terms of their community-based orders. The level of monitoring of young offenders will be up to the court in each case. Further breaches of community-based orders may require the imposition of a new intensive supervision order. This will subject the young offender to extremely intensive monitoring for a period of 12 months and where necessary this may include curfew monitoring by way of an electronic bracelet for a period of up to 6 months. 
The bill also proposes a range of additional amendments to the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act that will support these important changes. These include introducing split sentencing establishing a hierarchy of orders and making transfers to the District Court available where any Youth Court order is clearly inadequate. The requirement that young offenders consent to supervision with activities or community work orders is also removed. These orders are made in response to serious offending and it is not for offenders to decide which orders are appropriate for them. 
The new programmes and orders we are introducing and the funding we will make available to implement them will ensure that the people with the proven expertise knowledge and community standing needed to make a difference will be available to help serious young offenders turn their lives round. The passing of this bill will provide an opportunity for community groups Maori and iwi-based service providers and individuals to step up and make a fundamental positive difference in the lives of some of our most troubled and destructive young people. We are committed to ensuring that the right providers are identified and involved in the development of these services and that they are ultimately responsible for delivering the services in community-based settings. 
This Government believes that serious and repeat offending by young people needs a serious and intensive response. This bill offers a new approach and a fresh start for the worst young offenders. It is tough but it acknowledges that these people are trapped in a cycle of crime and need help and support to break away from a lifestyle of offending. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.