Need for responsible approach to youth justice

Children¹s Commissioner Cindy Kiro is calling on Don Brash to clarify his proposal to lower the age of criminality to twelve.

Dr Kiro supports Dr Brash¹s statements that there should be early intervention to stop young people falling into a criminal lifestyle and more services for young people who are at risk.

However Dr Kiro says Section 272 (2) of the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act 1989 already states ten is the age of criminal responsibility for murder and manslaughter. She says Dr Brash needs to explain the comments in his recent speech about reducing the age of criminality to 12.

³We know that most children who break the law have been abused and traumatised, and need care and protection. These are children who need to be rehabilitated.²

Decreasing the age of a criminal would be in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Dr Kiro says.

She points out the second periodic report of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has criticized New Zealand for keeping the age of ten for criminality and prosecuting 14-year-olds.

³Reducing the age of criminality would put New Zealand well out of line with other comparable countries,³ Dr Kiro says.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>