Bennett Paula: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9016] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I would like to address a few things that have been raised by previous speakers on this particular part of the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdictions and Orders) Amendment Bill. 
I will address some of the concerns about 12 and 13-year-olds. Yet again I reiterate where this change is coming from. We are talking about the most determined most recidivist offenders of 12 and 13 years of age who are getting more aggressive and are creating havoc wherever they go. I think of those young people not as our hope for the future but actually as our fear. Last month a 12-year-old in Palmerston North stabbed a stranger three times. The man needed 3 hours of surgery and was pretty close to death. So we are not talking about slight offences. 
The best thing I can do is give members the Police Association’s submission which said that changing the jurisdiction was not a matter of getting tough but more about gaining access to the specialist expertise that the Youth Court offered. The submission said that for 12 and 13-year-old serious repeat offenders a more direct youth justice response is not only appropriate but required. The Youth Court requires accountability and provides a restorative approach for both victim and offender. Where necessary it is able to protect the public interest through limitations on the freedom of those 12 and 13-year-olds. Unfortunately that is necessary for some of those young people. 
Let me give some assurances to the Opposition. Within our youth justice facilities the most serious young offenders will be separated out and kept in different wings. Sometimes they will be put with girls. We do not want 12-year-olds to be living with 16-year-olds. That was a huge concern for me when looking at the issue of the facilities. I give some assurances to the Committee that that is being looked at. I also assure the Committee that I am very keen to see the results of the select committee inquiry into child offenders and I will be taking it very seriously. 
I have had a very real concern about care and protection requirements being dealt with in the Family Court but not in the Youth Court. I feel that many of those 12 and 13-year-olds have care and protection issues that need to be dealt with. The news is that they can simultaneously have their offending issues dealt with through the Youth Court and their care and protection issues dealt with through the Family Court so we can make sure that we address the issues of these offenders. 
I make absolutely no apologies for the military-style activity camps. I do not think any members saw the one we ran as a trial. It was voluntary so those young people got to stand up and say they wanted to do it. These camps are for our toughest young people. Some have gone through a youth justice facility 11 times. That says to us that we are not getting it right. It says that we are not actually dealing with the issues behind the offending that we are not doing enough rehabilitation that not enough mentoring is going on and that not enough work is going on to change the behaviour back home. Those issues are all part of this bill and all part of this package. 
But it also says that there are some young hardened criminals whose behaviour is such that they need a short sharp shock that will be sustained over a period of time. One need only see the look in the eyes of some of those young people who have had that shock. They have seen another side of life. Staff have worked with them over a period of time; the mentoring has continued. It surprises me constantly to hear Opposition members vehemently oppose the bill. All the evidence shows that if we back this policy up with mentoring if we back it up with the right drug and alcohol programmes and if we back it up with what really needs to be done then we will see sustained change. 
Recently I saw some research done in England—[ 
Interruption 
] Opposition members are asking for evidence so I will give them some. The research said that the outcomes of parenting programmes—I am pretty sure some of the research also related to mentoring—were exactly the same for those who were compulsorily on the courses and those voluntarily on the courses. The outcomes were the same. Ninety percent of those who went on compulsory parenting courses said they would recommend them to other people. They turned round and said that the programme had made a sustained difference in how they acted and in what they did and they would recommend other people to do them. 
I want to touch on drug and alcohol rehabilitation because Jacinda Ardern asked how that is going. We worked on that issue over quite a long period last year. We met with Odyssey House Ronga Atea and Te Ropu Whariki and we asked them how they thought it could work where the capacity is in what they are doing and how we could make sure that the right resources were behind it. They agreed that for the first year they would like to see the residential part of the programme being run by Ronga Atea and we are certainly supporting them in that decision. As we roll it out further and the capacity comes up they will roll it out to other organisations. They have made decisions on where they can best meet the needs of offenders and they are really welcoming it in all respects. 
We also ran parenting focus groups with organisations that are used to working with these people. We heard from the University of Auckland Genesis Trust the Otara Boards Forum and many other organisations. The group met three times to talk about what the compulsory parenting orders might look like how they might get together what happens when the orders are made compulsory because I think that is a very fair question and how the parenting does actually change. But certainly a lot of the research that we have seen says that the legislation does have the capacity to make sustained change. 
We also ran focus groups on the mentoring programmes and they were certainly an interesting bunch of people. I do not know whether anyone else knows it but if we ask people who had got into some pretty serious trouble when they were young what turned their lives round they all have a “someone” story. Someone backed them over a long period of time. Someone helped them work towards change encouraged them and believed in them. It is often about believing in them and helping them over a long period of time and that is what this bill does. That is what those mentoring programmes will do. We will see the introduction of supervision with activity and we will see programmes like START Taranaki and Genesis Trust. 
Those who are undergoing supervision with activity courses will make that link to mentoring and that mentoring could follow them for up to 12 months. So they could spend 6 months under supervision with activity and then they could receive mentoring for up to another 12 months on top of that. The mentoring can be almost daily with some of the supervision with activity courses. For example mentors go back into the community with those young persons showing them how to get on a bus and how to get to a job. The mentors take them shopping to get the right clothes to get them into the right course and follow through on their areas of interest. They try to get them back into firstly education because to be quite honest most of them are pretty young. When that is not working it is about training and linking them up with employers but following them over a long sustained period of time. 
I know that we keep saying it and it can seem like it is not believable but a military-style activity camp on its own will not work; supervision with activity on its own will not work; and sticking a kid into a youth justice facility even with the therapy that goes on there on its own will not work. I can assure members that within those military-style activity camps there is a therapeutic component: a social worker is with the young people at all times 24/7. It is about behavioural change and everything else. But none of that will work unless it is sustained over a long period of time going back into the community and going back into the home. That is what this package this suite of options and activities gives to judges. We will follow up those young people and that is what will make the difference.