PM announces shake-up to tackle ‘brazen criminal offending’

The Government plans to make using or rewarding a child to commit a crime an aggravating factor in an effort to “crack down on an increase in brazen criminal offending”.

The promise originally was to create a new offence with a potential 10 year maximum prison term for people who use young people to commit a crime.

Asked how the offence would work, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the “evidence base will need to be there in order for police to charge somebody against that, so it adds an extra tool and the police’s a toolkit”.

“It adds consequences particularly for targeting young people.”

This was corrected by the Government shortly after the Prime Minister’s post-Cabinet press conference.

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Hipkins said he wanted to introduce the proposed changes before the election, but it would not pass through all its stages before then.

“Using a child to commit a crime is cowardly, exploitative and destroys lives, so the consequences must be serious,” he said.

“We’re told many ramraids are done for notoriety on social media and the news or petty theft, but we know there’s also an organised crime element to some of them.”

He also announced posting offending behaviour online would be an aggravating factor in sentencing.

“This ‘social media amendment’ we’re introducing will apply to adults and young people and provide the courts with an additional consideration when sentencing, and it sends a strong signal that this behaviour is unacceptable,” he said.

National announced on June 30 it would make filming and publishing a crime an offender is involved in an aggravating factor “to target adults involved in ram raids”, the party’s justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith said.

Hipkins said the Government had been working on it “for some time before they announced it”.

The Government also announced it would give the Family Court the ability to require, instead of requesting, young offenders to undertake community activities “such as cleaning graffiti and picking up rubbish”.

“The Family Court will also be able to require that an offender attend an educational, recreational or activity programme. That’s really important to get them engaged again and back on track and builds on the work we’re doing to improve school attendance.”

Goldsmith said Labour was “still refusing to impose real consequences for serious young offenders”.

“Beyond National’s policy, Labour’s announcement was window dressing designed to make it look like it actually cares about reducing youth crime.

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said using or rewarding a child to commit a crime would become an offence, rather than an aggravating factor. This was based on incorrect information supplied by the Prime Minister’s office (Amended July 17, 17.52pm).