SpeechORANGA TAMARIKI (YOUTH JUSTICE DEMERIT POINTS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDARROCH BALL (NZ First): I move That the Oranga Tamariki (Youth Justice Demerit Points) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.Firstly can I say that this bill is not about harsher penalties it's not about coming down hard on young offenders and it's not about being tough on crime or soft on crime. If anyone who reads this bill thoroughly and wants to understand it it's about giving purpose and structure to the current system. It's about giving structure to what already exists. In fact there's nothing in this bill that wants to change any of the offences any of the penalties or any of the provisions or resources that the current youth justice system has and uses to deal with young offenders. What this is about primarily is about giving structure particularly to the huge part that police play in the youth justice system—which I'll get into soon—but also giving interventions and early interventions to youth who pop up on the radar not after the 20th time that they offend not after the 10th time that they offend but after the first time that they offend. Everybody in this House knows and understands—and this bill realises that and it backs up the fact—that there are multiple reasons why young people offend. They don't just wake up one morning and decide they're going to go and rob a dairy. When that happens when those incidents occur and they pop up with serious offences and they get arrested and they get taken to Youth Court and they get taken to prison it's because that's the 20th 30th 40th time that they offended and nothing has been done of substance to help them stop that. Likely the first time that they did was when they were 10 11 12 or 13 when there were other influences in their lives that were causing them to go down that pathway—whether that be issues at home issues at school issues socially or issues with drugs or alcohol. What surprises me and amazes me is we've got a Youth Court that has actually great resources. They've got great programmes and great abilities to intervene in young people's lives. But what we do in this country is we do everything that we can not to put them in Youth Court—everything that we can. It's written in legislation for police not to prosecute. When people hear the term prosecute" they think "Oh punishment. So we mustn't do that—we mustn't demonise or criminalise young people." That's not what it's about. It's not what the youth justice system should be about. That's not what this bill is about. In fact what this bill does is it tries to turn it around on its head.We need to intervene once in the lives of young people that offend. It's not normal for young people to offend even at the low level. Now "intervene" doesn't mean putting them in cuffs put them in front of a judge get berated and put them into a prison cell; it means having a logical common-sense tiered system of intervention.Right now if a young person offends at the lower end of the scale the police are directed to do nothing except pick them up and take them back home. What's the problem with that? The problems start at home. So we have young people who are offending and offending and offending and the police have the direction to take them back to the place that caused the offending in the first place. Then we get surprised when we have the reoffending rates of young people so high when they enter Youth Court and even higher when they get to the certain serious level of offending and they have to get put into youth justice residence. It may come as a surprise to people here but when a young person steps one foot into Youth Court they have a more than 60 percent chance of reoffending—not because they went to Youth Court but because they went to Youth Court so late in the day because we failed to intervene when we should have. And then when they're in Youth Court only a very small minuscule number actually get to first of all step in front of a judge. But then when the offending is serious enough then they get to youth residence. A youth residence reoffending rate is 95 percent plus.Then you start talking about the conveyor belt of crime where we've got young people going from 10 11 12 who are offending going through the Youth Court going into youth justice residents of the system and ending up in adult court when they're older because they are disengaged young people who hate the system who hate authority who flip the bird at the courts and the police. They don't just wake up when they're 17 or 18 and say "Well I'm an adult now I better change." They are so deep-seated in what they are doing that they end up in the adult court and they end up in adult prison. More than half of every single adult who is sentenced to prison in adult court has previously been through the youth justice system—more than half. And we're sitting here and we pretend to accept that our youth justice system is working; the stats don't show it.Young people reoffending are increasing the seriousness of crime for young people is increasing and it could all be traced back to the fact that we have failed them when they were younger when they first started to offend. We failed to give them the structure and the resources and the intervention. It's not about arresting them and it's not about punishment; it's about ensuring they've got everything wrapped around them when their parents and the adults around them have failed them. What happens is that we as a country and a society and as a House and a Parliament are failing them further because we're not putting any interventions wraparound services around them.What this bill does is it gives structure to the police. Eighty percent of all young offenders don't end up in Youth Court; they are dealt with by police by a thing called "alternative action" or "diversion". Diversion is up to the police officer the police youth aid officer it's up to the area commander and it can vary from either Auckland or Southland. Unfortunately their direction right now is to not prosecute not to intervene. This gives structure to it. It gives demerit points. Everyone understands what demerit points are and how they work. If a young person offends at the lower end we need to intervene and find out why. We need to go around to their homes and find out why. We need to make sure they've got the support to stop them then not try and stop them when they've offended 20 times and they go into Youth Court. This is just ensuring that the resources that the youth justice system has at its disposal at the Youth Court level can be used on the young people at the early stage.The other detail in this bill is that it utilises the existing justice sector seriousness scale of offending. There's a measurement in there and I'm hoping that this bill gets enough support to get through to select committee so that it can be debated there and thoroughly gone through. It's just common sense that we look to tighten up and give every avenue we can to young people and young offenders to try and assist them to stop offending at an early stage. We don't want them to go to Youth Court or to youth residence because we all know including New Zealand First that that's a bad place for them to be. It's a bad place because at that point in time currently it's too late for them and they end up in the system. If we want to truly lower the adult crime rate lower the numbers of people in the gangs we need to start early with the young people get them right on track and get some structure to the youth justice system. Thank you Mr Speaker."