Old enough to have children and peddle class A drugs
But too young to be responsible

16th March 2016

“As far as I am concerned if she is old enough to bring two children into the world she is old enough to be held accountable for her actions.” Jess McVicar

As the debate rages about raising the age for young people attending Youth Court, two high profile cases have been in the media this week which opponents say exposes the folly of the proposal.

Jess Mcvicar, Youth Advocate for Sensible Sentencing says both cases are classic examples why we should not tamper with the existing age of the youth Court.

In the first case teen mum Bishop Holts was jailed for drug dealing but said the jail sentence would be a turning point in her life.

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11605043&ref=NZH_FBpage
Jess said "Bishop Holts was smoking cannabis at 11, had twin boys at 15, at 19 has been convicted of class A drug supply!

“But according to what advocates of raising the age of the Youth Court, [Just Speak want to raise the age to25] are saying this class A drug dealer is too young to realise she was committing a crime. What a load of bull.”

“As far as I am concerned if she is old enough to bring two children into the world she is old enough to be held accountable for her actions.”

In the second case 19 year old Dayna Paparoa taunted the police on Facebook after they posted a notice saying she was wanted for breaching her home detention conditions.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11604431

Jess says "Once again this is a young adult knowingly breaking the law, she has absolutely no respect for our law or justice system, she is laughing in the face of our police when they are trying to do their job, she intentionally broke her home detentions."

"Both of these girls are in the category of which Just Speak says do not understand they are committing crimes!”

But Jess says that is nonsense. “They absolutely knew what they were doing was wrong, they were simply mocking the law and testing the boundaries.”

" I do understand that a high number of youth have a bad upbringing and this can affect their life choices but we all know right from wrong , and we all know that there are consequences for our actions , it's just if you choose to worry about those consequences or not. But increasing the age of the Youth Court is not the answer."

ENDS

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