Submission on Children, Young Persons, and their Families (Youth Court Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill

The Families Commission welcomes the opportunity to provide comment on the Children, Young Persons, and their Families (Youth Court Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Bill.

We support some of the provisions in the Bill, namely: the insertion of the principle into the Youth Justice section of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989 that the Youth Court should address the underlying causes of the offending of young persons; the introduction of longer supervision orders; and allowing the Court to order parents to attend parenting training.

We note that It is well known that programmes that are most successful in reducing young persons’ offending address all of their risk factors, including the individual, family and whānau, school, peers, and neighbourhood risk factors. We also point out that programmes that work with families and whānau are generally more successful than those that do not.

We are opposed to the extension of the Youth Court Jurisdiction to 12 and 13-year-olds. We are concerned about the introduction of intensive supervision, curfews with electronic monitoring, and military-style activity camps, because it has been proved that these orders and activities in themselves do not reduce offending, unless they are combined with other successful interventions. We point out that mentoring programmes have generally been unsuccessful, and we suggest improvements to them.