Andersen GinnyRAM RAID OFFENDING AND RELATED MEASURES AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Minister of Justice): I present a legislative statement on the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I move That the Ram Raid Offending and Related Measures Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. In the last few years we have seen an unacceptable increase in retail crime. Particularly in the last year we have seen a spike in ram raid and smash-and-grab - type offending which is hugely concerning for communities across New Zealand. To me as a Minister and to this Government this is unacceptable. Ram raids harm business owners and they harm families and the wider communities that they occur in. Ram raiding causes significant property damage and threatens the sense of security and livelihoods of victims. People deserve to feel safe in their communities and shop owners and their employees should be able to go to work or lock up for the evening without the fear that their shop will be raided at night. The Government has been taking action to address this offending. Many of these offenders are children and young people and we have put in place a range of programmes to re-engage these children and young people in education in employment and into our society as well. These programmes are working. More than three-quarters of children and young people going through the fast-track programmes we rolled out in December last year have not gone on to reoffend. On top of these programmes as a Government we have taken a number of steps to reduce offending and prevent harm to our communities and small businesses right across New Zealand: the retail crime prevention funding to better protect small businesses from the risk of ram raids with tools like fog cannons bollards roller doors and CCTV upgrades; the Better Pathways Package we introduced in September 2022 to improve education and employment opportunities for young people; the enhanced fast-track model we announced in July to increase the immediacy the intensity and the duration of support for the small number of children and young people we see engaging in serious and persisting offending behaviour; and the additional 1800 front-line officers delivered in June which is a 21 percent increase from 2017 and it makes the police workforce the largest it has ever been. These actions have been effective in reducing the rate of ram raids which have declined by two-thirds since their peak in August of 2022. However the number of ram raids has remained unacceptably high and it is my view that one ram raid in New Zealand is one ram raid too many. We know there has been a gap in the system for a small group of young offenders where our interventions have not been working and the system does not have the tools to respond adequately. As I have said the system is working for three-quarters of young people but for this small group we need to do more and we need to focus in on the current gap in our system. This bill closes that gap and it provides a better range of tools to respond to the 12- and 13-year-olds with the most serious and persistent reoffending behaviour. Let me be clear: it is already against the law to commit a ram raid. People can be charged and convicted with existing offences of burglary or intentional property damage. This bill adds a new offence for ram raiding to the Crimes Act 1961 with a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment. This offence recognises the specific harms caused by ram raids and distinguishes it from other forms of burglary. There is the significant property damage from driving a vehicle front on into a building along with the intent to commit an offence such as stealing goods from that shop both of which seriously impact the livelihoods and potentially the lives of those victims inside that shop. This offence will capture not just the driver but it will also apply to passengers within that offending vehicle and the hangers-on waiting outside the building who share the criminal intent of participating in the ram raid. This means that the police will have to prove the offenders knew that the vehicle would be used to gain entry and that they intended to commit an offence once inside the building such as theft. Because we know there is a particular gap for children who commit multiple ram raids the bill also amends the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 to allow 12- and 13-year-olds to be proceeded against in the Youth Court jurisdiction for the new ram raid offence without their having to be a previous offender. This does not mean that a child will receive a sentence of imprisonment for this offence. The maximum penalty our Youth Court can impose for 12- and 13-year-olds is six months' custody in a youth justice facility and supervision for up to 12 months in the community. I want to emphasise that this is not about sending our children to prison but rather recognising the serious impact that ram raids are having in our communities. The aim of this change is to give the police and Oranga Tamariki the tools they need in the tool box to properly respond to the high levels of youth offending we are now seeing in New Zealand. Our goal is to break that cycle of reoffending which we are doing by holding those offenders accountable for their actions and by resourcing our police with the additional cops and also the tools they need to get on top of this destructive behaviour. This will ensure that children who ram-raid face greater accountability for their actions and that the system can respond quickly. It gives our courts the options to impose bail conditions including non-association curfew and residing at a specific address; detention in Oranga Tamariki custody where there is a risk of a child reoffending; intention to charge family group conference plan with escalation available to Youth Court if the plan is not agreed to or fails to be completed; and Youth Court orders including residential orders of up to six months being available if the charge is proven and supervision of up to 12 months. The bill also creates two new aggravating factors in the Sentencing Act 2002 to provide greater accountability for those who encourage offending by children or young people or who post offending online. These will be considered by judges when determining the appropriate penalty at sentencing. The first factor covers people who aid or abet the child or a young person to offend. This will apply if an adult is convicted as a party to an offence committed by a child or a young person. This further holds to account anyone who exploits the vulnerability of children or young people by encouraging them to offend potentially leading them into a life of crime. The second factor applies when an offender live streams or posts their offending online such as ram raiding. With the rise in the use of social media glorifying this kind of behaviour it can encourage copycat offending and create further harms to the victims who see themselves broadcast. This factor will also apply in the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989. This bill is targeted to close the gaps in responses available to children with serious and persistent offending behaviour and to hold them accountable when they commit a ram raid. This is the latest in a series of actions that the Government has taken to crack down on offending particularly youth offending which is at an unacceptable level in New Zealand right now. It provides interventions that help to break that cycle and to build a justice system that ensures less offending and fewer victims of ram raids. I commend this bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.