Collins Judith: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20862. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) 
: 
 I move  
That the Policing (Storage of Youth Identifying Particulars) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Labour ACT United Future and Progressive for their support for this legislation. I will deal with a couple of issues that have been raised in the first reading debate. The first was the issue that there is a conspiracy. This issue was raised by the member from the Maori Party Rahui Katene. I have to say that I am particularly concerned by that comment because it sounded as though the Maori Party had not been given a copy of the bill until yesterday evening. Actually it had a copy of the bill 10 days ago as one would expect from a confidence and supply partner so I have to say I am a bit disappointed by that comment. Anyone who has any dealings with me understands that I am not someone who indulges in conspiracies; I do things pretty straightforwardly. So I have to say that I am very disappointed by that sort of implication. 
An issue was raised by the Green Party member Keith Locke about whether the bill should go to a select committee. I acknowledge that that was his concern. This matter did actually go to a select committee over 3 years ago in 2008 when as the Hon Annette King has related the original bill went through a very long process of 2 years in an attempt to get it right. Yet there were still unintended consequences. I do not cast any aspersions on people because when we have long processes like this and very complicated legislation with multiple rights that we are trying to connect to other Acts that have been around for a long time it is very important to understand that occasionally something will not work right. 
Mr Keith Locke has asked for some information as to essentially what went wrong. I am happy to provide that information to the House. The 1958 Act essentially said that if a person has had particulars—fingerprints and photographs—taken and that person has been acquitted so in other words found not guilty then those particulars must be destroyed. The 2008 Act turned it right round and said that the police could not retain the particulars—the photographs or fingerprints—unless the person had been convicted. And there were a couple of other exceptions such as with diversion and section 102. 
Basically the 2008 Act said that the person had to be convicted. This became a problem for youth in terms of the Youth Court which was set up—as has been rightly noted—in many ways to protect youth from themselves and to try to deal with their offending. It was set up for youth not to hide from their offending but to deal with it in a sensible way at a time when an intervention can make the most difference to their lives and also to the lives of potential victims. Essentially most of the interventions as they are mostly known in the Youth Court are not considered to be convictions even though in many cases the youth has said: “Yes I did the crime. Yes this is what I expect to happen.” There will have been a family group conference and interventions made so the only convictions really that would be covered by the Act would be those where the youth has been sent by the Youth Court through to the District Court for sentencing. These would be very serious offences such as rape murder and manslaughter—very serious offences. In other words all of these other examples of what we normally loosely call convictions for things like burglaries would not be counted as convictions. 
I do not think it is in the best interest of young people who have offended to ignore the fact that they have committed burglaries and that they are clearly in need of some pretty serious intervention in order to save them from a life of crime and to say that it is all a conspiracy and that the police are being mean. Well the police are not being mean; they are trying to save these young people from themselves and in many cases from a lifetime of crime. One of the things we know is that the younger somebody comes into the justice system particularly into the prison system—an 18-year-old for instance—the more likely they are to stay there for most of their lives. That is something we are trying to avoid. 
I think that all parties in this House agree with the fact that we are trying to deal with these young offenders—these 14 or 15-year-olds in many cases—who can sometimes cause quite a lot of harm and can cause victims to feel re-victimised if these matters are not dealt with which can ruin their lives. I do not think it is being smart in terms of legislation to ignore that situation and to say that it is a case of the police being mean and that we want to go around and help our young people against the police. The police are not there to be mean to young people; they are there to try to prevent crime and to hold offenders to account. We do not help young people by not holding them to account when they create victims and when they offend against the law. 
I say to the other members of the House who are supporting this bill that their support of this bill will help the police to do their jobs better in just the same way as was intended in 1958 and in the same way as the House intended in 2008. The House did not intend to change the law in relation to obtaining photographs and fingerprints of young people who have committed a crime and been dealt with in the Youth Court. The House did not intend that to happen. It was an inadvertent drafting error and the process had gone on for over 2 years. So I say to members who are suddenly saying today that we need longer processes that there is an example of a long process that did not work quite the way it was intended although most of the Act has. I think it is a good Act and we on this side of the House were very pleased to be able to support it. 
In essence this bill is about restoring what everybody else would have thought was the status quo and about helping the police in their constant fight to prevent crime to hold offenders to account and to protect the rights of victims. I commend this bill to the House.