They can’t buy alcohol, vote, or smoke, but New Zealand’s 17-year-olds still hold a special legal privilege: being tried as adults through the court system.
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Now, New Zealand is being labelled an international embarrassment for continuing to put 17-year-olds on trial as adults.
Our youth justice system has often been held up as one of the better models globally. But for advocacy groups, the decision to send 17-year-olds through the adult courts has long been a sticking point.
Now, 33 community and NGO groups have cosigned a letter calling on the government to reconsider its position, and keep under-18s in the youth system.
In the open letter to Prime Minister John Key, a variety of groups dealing with young people called for the youth court age to be raised to 18.
“In our criminal justice system, 17-year-olds are treated like adults. They are tried in adult courts and held in adult prisons,” the letter reads. “But 17-year-olds are not adults yet. They can't vote, buy alcohol or tobacco, or enlist in the military without consent. The basis for these laws is that until 18, it is not appropriate to treat young people as adults – they need guidance and protection.”
Children's Commissioner and former principal youth court judge Andrew Becroft said New Zealand, as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, should have raised the age a long time ago.
Apart from a few US states, New Zealand was alone in failing to do so and the decision was an embarassment, he said.
"We are just entirely out of step and we just can't go on simply ignoring it year after year - it's just unacceptable and it represents really an enduring stain on our otherwise good justice record.
"It's got to be fixed, it's got to be addressed and it's got to be done now."
Others co-signing the letter say 17-year-olds simply don’t have the brain capacity for their decisions to be judged as adults.
Brainwave Trust, an organisation that looks at brain development in children and young people, was one of the signatories.
Spokesperson Sue Wright said there was a scientific basis to say 17-year-olds should not be treated as adults by the justice system - their brains haven’t yet developed.
"In these mid-teen years which is about 15, 16, 17, adolescents' brains are at the peak of a new phase of development with a pre-frontal cortex, a part of the front of the brain that does all of the consequence thinking and planning thinking, still in construction."
Compelling teenagers to engage in risky behaviour was all part of nature's plan, she said.
"Literally in the brain you have chemicals that drive you to take risks because otherwise we'd never leave home.
"It's believed this is a biological change in the brain to encourage us to leave the environment in which we've grown up and go out and explore in the world.”
Also signing on was the Salvation Army - and spokesperson Major Campbell Roberts said there were big advantages to keeping those 17 and under out of the adult justice system where things could quickly escalate.
"They get into a situation in which they are meeting with sometimes quite hardened criminals. It will tend to take them into spaces where they'll start to learn the tricks of the trade.
"So it's our strong belief they should be dealt with as young people and there is an opportunity to really turn their life around if we'll only take it."
Becroft said there was a popular misconception raising the age to 18 meant young people would suddenly be let off with more serious crimes.
"The Youth Court has still open to it the very serious sentences where young people can be convicted and transferred to the district court for sentence."
A proposal to raise the age to 18 went to Cabinet recently but no decision has been made.
A government delegation will front up to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva on Friday to explain New Zealand's position as part of a five-yearly review of countries and their level of compliance. Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft will address the committee on Thursday.
- reporting by Conan Young/RNZ.