Hague Kevin: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hague Kevin: Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1448] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of my colleague Metiria Turei in opposition to the Children Young Persons and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill. We have not had any opportunity to look at the bill as it has only just been tabled and made available to members and the public. Frankly I am surprised that the Minister would allow such an abuse of the parliamentary process. I thought she would have been more upfront than that because failing to give the House or the public advance notice of the legislation is an attack on the democratic process. There is no way that the legislation can be properly scrutinised and no means for the public to analyse the legislation and tell their representatives what their views are. That is disgracefully anti-democratic. 
This bill provides a mixed bag of provisions; some we support and some we cannot. Extending the breadth of orders for the Youth Court is a good thing. Some are a little dubious such as the parenting orders for the parents of a young offender. It is contrary to the principles of justice that someone who is not the subject of the court proceedings could have a binding court order imposed on him or her for which any breach would have legal consequences. I look forward to investigating that in the select committee process. 
Other measures such as the use of ankle bracelets to avoid residential sentences enable the court to impose longer supervision orders. They have their problems but they are not necessarily objectionable. I am aware that Judge Becroft the Principal Youth Court Judge suggested that this might be a useful option. I have read his work particularly his address to the Prison Fellowship’s 25th anniversary national conference in May last year where he canvassed these issues. I think that his analysis of what is effective intervention is faultless. 
It is also very important that access to drug and alcohol rehabilitation and counselling is extended both in terms of breadth and also in length of time on the programmes. Young people need to be able to spend reasonable periods—6 months or more—on these kinds of programmes if they are to be fully effective in the long term. There is a huge gap in the provision of these services so it is not enough to give the court powers to require young offenders to attend them. Those services must be of the highest quality and be readily available. We simply do not have the funding available at present to provide all the necessary drug and alcohol interventions that we need. These provisions will not be effective unless there are high-quality best-practice and properly funded long-term services for young offenders to attend. 
One provision that is entirely objectionable is the extension of the jurisdiction of the Youth Court to those children aged 12 and 13 who commit serious crimes. This was the subject of a member’s bill; the policy was roundly condemned and should continue to be so. When that bill was being discussed at the select committee submitters reminded members that there are serious principles at stake in any attempt to increase the criminal responsibility of children. 
The first issue of course is that the bill is contrary to New Zealand’s obligations under the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. The bill treats very young children of 12 in the same context as much older young people denying them the opportunity to be treated in the context of their family and their age. There is no reason why children as young as this should be dealt with in more formal criminal proceedings because of the nature of their crime. A child of 12 is no more likely to exhibit greater understanding of the effects of his or her actions simply because the crime is of greater severity. In addition all the evidence shows that the younger the offender the more likely the success of his or her rehabilitation if the intervention is family based and immediate. The best opportunity for that kind of systemic family intervention is in the Family Court. There is absolutely no reason why these children should be dealt with in the Youth Court. This provision alone renders the bill unsupportable but of course there are the provisions for the establishment of boot camps. 
Following the work of Judge Becroft and the address by Jacinda Ardern it is clear that exposure to older offenders time spent in prison and explicitly punitive centres like boot camps at best have no impact on reoffending and at worst produce the results already shown in New Zealand: reoffending rates in excess of 90 percent. The evidence of the old 3-month custodial sentence of corrective training proved beyond reasonable doubt that these kinds of courses fail to reduce reoffending. Hence they contribute to unsafe communities by producing stronger fitter and better-informed young offenders. By working with young offenders’ families there is much less risk that any deviant behaviour is shared or becomes entrenched. The young person is reconnected to his or her family and community. The risk of reoffending is greatly reduced and that is surely the point. By isolating young people with other young offenders real opportunities to turn their behaviour around are lost to the community’s detriment. 
Young Maori offenders will suffer the worst from these measures. Research presented by Judge Becroft in May last year shows that young Maori offenders are more likely to come to the attention of the police even though their offending is less serious than that of their Pakeha counterparts. Other New Zealand statistics show—by way of example in diversion rates—that young Pakeha are four times more likely to get diversion than young Maori. Further research from Christchurch shows that if people are Maori they are more likely to be stopped and arrested than if they are Pakeha. The system has filters that over-identify Maori leading to higher imprisonment rates and longer sentences than those for non-Maori. This bill will mean that these failed boot camps will be filled with predominantly Maori young offenders even when their crimes are of less severity than those of Pakeha. It will mean that many of our young Maori men and women will spend a large proportion of their youth in institutions that will encourage a greater chance of reoffending. When set against the “three strikes” legislation these young people begin their lives on a slippery slope towards a lifetime of incarceration. 
This bill is designed to deal with only a very small number of serious young offenders who need the highest level of intervention. Many of the interventions proposed in this bill are demonstrable failures and will lead to increased reoffending. No doubt Government policy will not be blamed despite all evidence clearly showing that it is wrong. No doubt young people and their families will be vilified when the policies fail to deliver the safer communities that New Zealanders deserve. We have evidence of that with the statement from Garth McVicar of the Sensible Sentencing Trust that an adult offender convicted of manslaughter of a young man should have been discharged because minor crimes like graffiti need to be “dealt with seriously”—“seriously” in this case being a euphemism for “fatally”. The Green Party will oppose this bill.