James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move:

"That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am pleased to bring the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 before the House today. The Bill is an important addition to the body of law that protects children from the harmful effects of crime on their lives, their families' lives and their futures as citizens who are properly equipped to benefit fully from all that society has to offer.

The Bill address a very specific issue, which is to recognise and make punishable in law the harm caused to children by drawing them into a life of crime. By introducing the Bill the Government will deliver on the two programme for Government commitments to legislate against the coercion and use of minors in the sale and supply of drugs and to criminalise adults who groom children to commit crimes.

The existing law provides that an adult who uses a child to commit a crime can be punished for that crime but it does not address the separate, and arguably more significant, harm that is done to the child in such cases. The law has never recognised that there are two wrongs taking place when a child is groomed into committing crime. There is the visible offence against the original victim but also a very grave wrong against the child. This new legislation will outlaw the grooming of children into crime. For the first time, it will be an offence for an adult to compel, coerce, direct or deceive a child for the purpose of engaging in criminal activity, or for an adult to induce, invite, aid, abet, counsel or procure a child to engage in criminal activity.

The purpose of the Bill is to address the harm that is done to the child, which may arguably be more serious than the immediately visible offence, especially when carried out as part of a pattern over a sustained period or by a trusted person within that child’s circle. Anyone who is found guilty of the new offences faces a term of imprisonment of up to 12 months on summary conviction and up to five years if they are convicted on indictment. The child victim does not have to be successful in carrying out the offence for the law to apply.

Great care is required when framing new legislation aimed at harms against children, particularly to avoid any unintended outcomes. In some cases, the person grooming a child to commit a crime is another child under the age of 18, who may also be a victim of this type of grooming. It is important to take into account the vulnerabilities and needs of all children who might be affected so that no further harm is done. Any legislation which simply criminalises the recruitment of children into crime could have the unintended effect of criminalising other children, without having any real impact on those who actually control criminal gangs. With this in mind, liability for the new offences is being limited to adults. In such circumstances, other interventions that seek to mitigate harm and that are tailored to the needs of children are more appropriate.

The threshold for the offences in the Bill is set deliberately low in order to allow the authorities to intervene before a pattern of offending can develop to the point where more serious offences are being committed and significant harm is done to the child. Setting a higher threshold would mean that these low-level offences could not be tackled and more serious offending would have to occur for the legislation to take effect. Where an offence is detected, it will be a matter for An Garda Síochána and the DPP to decide how to proceed.

I want to acknowledge the efforts made previously in the House to address the involvement of children in crime. Several Private Members' Bills have been brought forward over the years, aimed in particular at children being used by adults involved in the illegal drugs trade. I recognise the role of the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, when she was in opposition. In 2016 Professor Geoffrey Shannon, who was the special rapporteur on child protection at the time, recommended that Ireland should introduce new legislation similar to the Children and Justice Legislation Amendment (Youth Justice Reform) Act 2017 in Victoria, Australia. That legislation made it a crime for an adult over the age of 21 to knowingly recruit a child to engage in any criminal activity punishable with a term of imprisonment of five years or more.

The Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 goes further to protect children from criminal activity than the earlier Private Members' Bills and the Australian legislation. It will make it a criminal offence to engage a child in any type of criminal activity including but not limited to crimes related to the illegal drugs trade. It also includes all of the lower level criminal activities that frequently accompany the sale and supply of illegal drugs and can have such a corrosive effect on communities.

Irrespective of what changes we might decide to make to the law, the fact remains that legislation to deal with the exploitation of children for any criminal purpose requires a carefully considered approach, involving consideration of prosecutorial, operational and service delivery issues as well as the strict letter of the law. When considering any new law that affects children who are involved in crime, it is important to bear in mind that a key feature of any successful approach to youth crime is to try to keep young people out of the criminal justice system as far as possible. The Bill has been developed alongside other non-legislative measures to address child criminality.

The Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027, which I launched in April 2021, recognises that young people in conflict with the law should be treated as children first. It emphasises due respect for the rights of young people in a way that strengthens their capacity for positive participation in community life and reinforces respect for the human rights and freedoms of others. The strategy is designed to provide a developmental framework to address key ongoing challenges and newly emerging issues in the area of youth justice. This includes preventing offending from taking place and diverting children and young adults who commit a crime away from further offending and involvement with the criminal justice system.

The youth justice strategy emphasises evidence-informed development of programmes and interventions. It also provides for enhanced criminal justice processes, detention and post-detention measures to provide consistent support to encourage desistance from crime and promote positive personal development for young offenders. It is well recognised internationally that more considered responses by justice systems for this age group may produce better results.

Research tells us that young adults, not unlike adolescents, can be particularly vulnerable to peer pressure, difficult personal or socioeconomic factors, including substance misuse, and the impact of childhood trauma. A conviction can result in a chain reaction of negative outcomes for a young person including limiting employment opportunities, preventing them from getting visas to travel abroad and social exclusion, all of which can feed into reoffending cycles, which is not to anyone's benefit. It is important that we consider the supports and interventions needed for young people as they move into adulthood, as personal circumstances do not just change overnight when people turn 18.

If a young person under the age of 18 commits an offence, they can be given access to the statutory Garda diversion programme, including supervision by a Garda juvenile liaison officer. The diversion programme provides a second chance and enables young people to avoid prosecution and a criminal record. The programme has proven to be very successful in diverting young people under the age of 18 away from crime by offering guidance and support to them and their families. The Garda youth diversion programme is provided for in the Children Act 2001 and a key support to the programme is the network of more than 100 youth diversion projects. These are community-based multi-agency crime prevention initiatives which seek to divert young people who have become involved in crime and antisocial behaviour and to support wider preventative work within the community and to work with families at risk.

Youth diversion projects work with young people from 12 to 17 years of age to reduce offending and recidivism. They seek to facilitate personal development, promote civic responsibility and improve long-term employability prospects. The projects are primarily targeted at young people who are considered at risk in communities where a specific need has been identified and where there is a risk of them remaining within the justice system if no intervention takes place. The aim of the youth diversion projects is to promote the conditions needed for the behavioural patterns of young people towards law and order to develop and mature through positive interventions and interactions.

Deputies are aware of the groundbreaking Greentown project that is being undertaken by the University of Limerick with the support of the Department of Justice and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. It has informed the development of policy and practice. The aim of the Greentown project is to investigate the involvement of children in criminality and to establish interventions to tackle the problem. This innovative project was recognised at the 2020 European crime prevention awards and provides insights into how criminal networks attract and confine children, encouraging and coercing them to become involved in serious crime and limiting their opportunities to escape their influence.

As well as analysing how criminal networks recruit and control vulnerable children, the team running the Greentown project have attempted to assess the scale of this problem and the resulting national prevalence report established that this issue is widespread across the country, in both rural and urban settings. The Greentown team are currently carrying out two trials to evaluate interventions to address this issue. The interventions are designed to reduce and disrupt the influence of criminal networks on vulnerable children. The teams operating the two trials work closely with An Garda Síochána at a local level to reduce and disrupt the influence of criminal networks on children and to provide supports for their positive development. This work is assisted by an international team of experts on crime and criminal networks, together with Irish scientific, policy and practice expertise in child protection and welfare, drugs and community development, and is strongly supported by key State agencies, particularly An Garda Síochána. The interventions that are being developed and trialled through the Greentown project will become another significant tool with which we can tackle the difficult, and often seemingly intractable, problem of the involvement of children in crime.

It is vital to the future cohesion of our society, as well as to the lives of the individual children affected, that we take up all of the options that are available to reduce the harm done to them and to give them a future where they can avail of all that our society has to offer. The provisions in this Bill will further strengthen the ability of relevant authorities to intervene where children are being groomed into a life of crime. In particular, An Garda Síochána will be enabled to directly tackle the harm caused to children by grooming them into crime without having to address other issues first. By adding this new legislation to our Statute Book, we will send a strong message to those people in our society who groom children into criminality that not only is it not acceptable to harm children in this way, but also that we are equipping our authorities with the tools needed to intervene and to deal with the problem.

This Bill is an important addition to the laws of our State that are aimed at protecting children from harm. The immediate and ongoing harms that result from children being groomed into crime will be directly addressed by the provisions in this Bill. The Bill will also reduce the likelihood that they will become involved in criminal lifestyles in the longer term and into adulthood. Enactment of the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 will send a strong message to communities that grooming children into criminal activity is not acceptable and can be tackled. It will also give a mandate to An Garda Síochána to intervene and to take appropriate actions at a local level, thereby reducing the harm done to children in these circumstances and reducing the likelihood of offences being committed in the first place.

I look forward to the contributions in the course of our debate and would be happy to address any aspects of the legislation that Deputies wish to raise today and subsequently. I commend the Bill to the House.

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