Human Rights Commission
Media Release
2 May 2007

Bill to jail children would put NZ in breach of international law

A bill to lower the age for criminal prosecutions against children would breach international and New Zealand human rights law according to Chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan.

“This Bill is fundamentally flawed and the Human Rights Commission urges its withdrawal,” she said before the Law and Order Select Committee at Parliament today.

The Serious Crimes (Young Offenders) Bill increases the number of offences for which young people aged 10 to 14 will be dealt with by the adult courts and extends the Court’s ability to jail children.

Ms Noonan said, “This legislation does nothing to solve a complex issue. Worse it will lead to the breach of our obligations to international human rights law and sideline a youth justice system that has earned praise from around the world.”

If passed the Bill would result in many of the offences under the Crimes Act 1961 and the Summary Offences Act 1981 becoming “serious offences” bringing children as young as 12 within the jurisdiction of the adult court.

Such an outcome would contradict international conventions that New Zealand has ratified, primarily the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The UN committee responsible for monitoring compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child has already commented unfavourably on the age at which a child can be charged with a criminal offence in New Zealand. At present children under 14 can be prosecuted for murder and manslaughter. The bill would lower the age to 12 for a wide range of offences.

Ms Noonan said there was no evidence that tougher sentencing for children would reduce the rate of offending any better than the present system.

She added that youth offending has remained stable for the last 10 years and that the restorative justice approach for young offenders had earned praise from visiting criminal justice researchers and was being copied overseas.

ENDS

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