Wilkinson Kate: Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill — First Reading 
Wilkinson Kate: Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill — First Reading 
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KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 Speaking on this bill which National supports going to the Law and Order Committee it is useful to reiterate what it does and what its rationale is. 
To a certain extent I agree with Mr Mark’s comments. The age of criminal responsibility is somewhat contentious. At present under the Crimes Act the age of criminal responsibility is 10 but a young person under 14 cannot be prosecuted for any offence except murder or manslaughter unless it can be established that the child knew what he or she was doing and knew that it was wrong—hence Bailey Junior Kurariki became the country’s youngest convicted killer at 13 when he was sentenced for murdering Michael Choy. The irony of the matter is that if Mr Choy had been only injured or wounded then Kurariki could not legally have been charged at all. 
This bill allows those young people aged 12 and over who are charged with serious offences to be tried in the general courts rather than the Youth Court. It keeps the current age of criminal responsibility for murder and manslaughter at 10 but introduces a new category of serious offences for anyone aged 12 or over. 
Youth crime is certainly one of our most urgent problems. An overwhelming number of prison inmates began their criminal careers as young offenders. Young people aged between 10 and 16 are responsible for a quarter of the crime in New Zealand. Youth offending has been quoted as being 21 percent of all offending. We do need to get at-risk children off the conveyor belt to crime and locking them up simply will not do that. And yes a person 10 years of age—or 12 years of age for that matter—is still a child. 
As an aside it is interesting that under the bill to increase the minimum legal purchasing age for alcohol which is now set at 18 years of age a person 18 years of age is also defined as a child. Yet here we are looking at treating a 12-year-old as an adult. So an 18-year-old is a child and a 12-year-old is an adult. 
Although many young people offend at some stage when they are growing up under the present system some attend the youth justice family group conferences that Mr Mark referred to and that is all. Others get recycled once twice three times or even more through these conferences but they keep reoffending. Research has shown that two-thirds of the 15 to 16-year-olds dealt with by family group conferences reoffend and one in five ends up behind bars within 3 years. 
Ron Mark 
: A real success eh? 
KATE WILKINSON 
: Very successful. Although total apprehensions of children under 13 have dropped it is apparent and it is concerning that violent crime has actually increased. We need to consider the hard-core youngsters who repeat offend again and again. Some of these youngsters are committing very serious crimes—and very serious adult crimes. Lowering the age of criminal responsibility alone is not enough. It will not see these 12-year-olds convicted of serious crimes being locked up in adult prisons. We have four youth justice facilities with a total of only about 102 beds. 
There is certainly an argument that if an adult crime is committed then adult time is done. Although members on this side of the House and New Zealand First certainly take the issue of young offenders very very seriously it is obvious from the retorts of members on the other side that they do not consider it a serious matter for our society. 
These young people are not treated completely as adults. It is a sad indictment on our society when we have to protect our community from children under 12 years of age who have committed vicious crimes. This bill is the band-aid; it is certainly not the cure. But part of our duty as members of Parliament is the protection of society and if that means incarcerating young people who commit adult crimes then so be it. It is unacceptable for a youth to commit rape at the age of 13 but we must wait until he turns 14 and commits rape again before society is protected from him. 
It is also interesting to compare the age of criminal responsibility in the bill with that in other jurisdictions. In North Carolina the age of criminal responsibility is 6. In England Wales and Australia it is 10. In Canada and Ireland it is 12. So the age of criminal responsibility being suggested by this bill is certainly not out of kilter. 
If a child aged 12 and over commits a serious offence under this bill then we must look at exactly what is a serious offence. Under this bill it is defined as: “any offence—(a) for which the maximum penalty is imprisonment for a term of not less than 3 months or a fine of not less than $2000;”. One may be so bold as to suggest that this should in fact be a minimum and not a maximum. However that is an issue that the select committee can certainly duly debate and discuss. 
These children may be children but they are committing very adult crimes. Society deserves to be protected but most important these children need to be saved from a life of crime. They need the protection of a more structured justice system. Incarcerating them in a youth justice facility for a period of say 3 months—and I understand the average stay is only 61 days—is simply not enough. It is not enough time to enable any effective rehabilitation of that young criminal. This bill does not go far enough but perhaps a select committee is the forum to put some more teeth into it. 
We suggest that judges need the power to help these children. Locking these children away will not help them. Giving judges more power to help them may actually assist in rehabilitation to keep them away from crime and to get them off that conveyor belt to crime. Judges need the power to help the parents of these children and to make sure that there are steps put in place for say curfews and to deal with the parents perhaps by way of parenting orders—not as a punishment but as a positive development that is consistent with parental responsibility. After all these children are very very young but they can also be very very violent. 
The judges need power to order effective rehabilitation. Locking the children up in a youth justice facility with no further action than that will not go a long way to rehabilitating them. We want these children rehabilitated and back leading a normal life in society. We need the judges to have more power to provide the resources to get these kids off the conveyor belt to crime. 
National supports this bill going to a select committee with the proviso that we feel that it certainly does not go far enough. There is the hope that the scrutiny of the select committee will give this bill some more teeth and make it more effective in keeping these children out of a life of crime and off the conveyor belt to crime and getting them back into society.