Debate contribution: Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Sian Mulholland on 15 June 2026.

MLA

Ms Sian Mulholland

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

15 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Justice Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5614421

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I agree. That brings me to my section about victims. Any reform that does not take victims seriously will fail. That is why the reform needs to be victim-centred. It is not about choosing children over victims but about recognising that, if our current response does not reduce future harm, it is not serving victims well. The Victims' Commissioner rightly warned that there has not been any ethically or systematically gathered evidence that would allow anyone to claim that there is a settled victims' position on the minimum age of criminal responsibility, so I do not claim that there is a single victims' view: there is not. Crime and harm will be experienced differently by every victim, and justice will look and feel different to every victim. However, the one common thread that I have heard often when I have met victims and victims' organisations is that they want reassurance that no one will go through what they went through. If MACR is raised, victims must be informed, and they must still be supported. Harm must be recognised, and victims must not be excluded from the process or given the impression that, because there is no prosecution, there is no action. The absence of prosecution must never mean the absence of support for victims. As referenced by the Minister, the Victim Charter makes it clear that, if no one is brought to justice, victims still have entitlements and can access services. Victim Support NI was clear that it provides emotional support, information and practical help even when a victim does not want to progress with the reporting of a crime. Victims need more than a system that reacts; they need a system that prevents. The best way to protect victims is to prevent further victims. We should be very careful about telling the public that serious harm becomes legal simply because the response is not the criminal prosecution of a child. Not only is that wrong, but it risks frightening families and victims unnecessarily. None of this diminishes victims. They are entitled to expect that the Assembly will take their pain seriously and that the state will do everything that it can to prevent harm from happening again. Victims deserve more than the appearance of accountability; they deserve a system that holds a child accountable in the right way but also reduces the risk of harm to another victim. As I said before, the most effective way to protect victims is to prevent future victims. There is another myth that I have heard many times: that a 10-year-old knows right from wrong. I understand why people say that. I am a parent of three children, and I know that many parents will look at their children and think about their moral awareness. Knowing that something is wrong is not the same as fully understanding its impact or having the maturity to regulate emotions and actions in the moment. A child can know a rule and still lack the developmental capacity to respond like an adult. Developmental research is clear that the parts of the brain that are responsible for judgement, impulse control, risk assessment and self-regulation are still developing right through adolescence and into early adulthood. A major review commissioned by the Scottish Sentencing Council found that the brain does not fully mature until at least the mid-20s, with systems linked to self-regulation developing much later. Dr Phil Anderson, a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry, said that young people are "demonstrably and substantially different" from adults and that legislative approaches need:

"to reflect the current scientific understanding of the brain".

That is the core issue here. Our laws should be based on what we know about the brain development of children now, not what we wish children would be capable of in moments of crisis. We already recognise that children are different in almost every other area of their life. We do not treat them like adults in any other context, because we understand that children are still developing and maturing. This is not just about neuroscience in the abstract; it is also about the children who are most likely to come into contact with the justice system. When someone says, "My 10-year-old knows right from wrong", they are thinking about a child who is most likely safe and cared for. However, what about children who have experienced trauma, neglect, domestic or sexual violence, poverty, care instability, exploitation, unmet mental health need or continued disruption in school or family life? Professor Lisa Bunting's work on childhood adversity has been important in shaping the narrative. Her evidence tells us that childhood adversity in Northern Ireland is not marginal to the debate; it is central to it. Almost half of young people aged 11 to 19 in Northern Ireland have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE), and that exposure is patterned by deprivation. Professor Bunting also highlights the clear dose response relationship between ACEs and later harm. Adults with four or more ACEs, compared with those with none, are eight times more likely to report personal contact with the criminal justice system. I want to be really clear, though, about what that means and does not mean. It does not mean that adversity determines a child's future, nor does it mean that every child who experiences trauma will cause harm. It does not excuse harmful behaviour. It does not erase the victim, and it does not remove the need for accountability. What it shows, however, is that knowing right from wrong is not enough as the legal test for criminal responsibility. The Youth Justice Agency data makes that point even clearer. In 2024-25, 172 individual children aged 10 to 13 were referred to youth justice services, generating 298 referrals. Most children appeared once, admittedly, but there was a small group that had repeated contact with the system. Care-experienced children accounted for 105 of those 298 referrals or 35·2% of referrals in that age group. That paints a troubling picture. The children who are repeatedly coming to the attention of the youth justice system are not a random group of children. Most are already known to the state and already carry care experience, instability, trauma or unmet need. There are even starker details when we look at girls and young women in the Juvenile Justice Centre (JJC). This is not about those who are sentenced in custody. JJC figures include children held under the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 (PACE) on remand and under sentence. That data shows that two thirds of girls in JJC custody — 65·4% — were care-experienced. Those figures should stop us in our tracks, because, if young girls who are entering or are held in custody are so often young women already known to the care system, we have to ask a very uncomfortable question: why are young women with care experience so much more likely to be in custody? We have to ask whether the state is stepping in early enough to support some of our most vulnerable children. What interventions are we missing? To humanise this, I think about a young woman whom I met in a residential centre in the Western Trust area. She was bright, amazing and articulate — just the sort of person about whom, if you met her today, you would think that her voice needs to be heard in all of this. She had experienced more adversity in her short life than any adult I have known. She told me what was like to be 10 years old and in trouble with the police — the bright lights, the adults talking over her and everyone being really loud. Yes, she had done something wrong, but what happened to her and around her did not prevent harm. It did not help her to understand the harm or change her behaviour. It frightened and traumatised her. It reinforced the trauma at the very age when the system should have been trying to understand what had happened to lead her to that point. Now, at 16, she was able to tell me about how that experience, she believes, contributed to how she kept offending. At 10 years old, it affected how she saw authority, how she pushed back and why she kept offending. That is not an excuse, but it is an explanation that we should be mature enough to hear. If the response to a traumatised 10-year-old makes her more frightened, more distrustful and more alienated from the adults who are supposed to be helping her, we have to ask what that response is protecting. Is it protecting the public, or is it storing up more harm for the future? When someone says that a 10-year-old knows right from wrong, my answer is this: yes, many do, but a child who has never lived with trauma, violence or instability may not be choosing from the same pool of options as a child who feels unsafe, threatened and traumatised. The protective side of Professor Bunting's evidence is just as important here. She did research on positive childhood experiences, which, admittedly, I had not heard an awful lot about. The research showed how trusted adults, safe relationships, predictable routines and support inside and outside the family unit can make a real, measurable difference. That is not soft evidence; it points to prevention evidence. It tells us that relationships, stability and support are not optional extras but part of how we reduce harm, reduce risk and interrupt the pathway from childhood adversity into later violence, victimisation and justice system contact. The real test is not simply whether a child knows that a rule has been broken but whether the response that we choose will help that child to understand the harm and change their behaviour and whether it will make victims and communities safer. That leads me on to another misconception, which is that criminalising children earlier will reduce their offending. The evidence does not support that simple claim. The Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime (ESYTC), which is a major longitudinal study following around 4,300 young people, is one of the most influential studies in modern youth justice. It found that serious offending is linked to wider vulnerabilities and social adversity; that early police contact and formal processing can predict later persistent offending; and that diversion from formal justice reduces escalation. One of its clearest conclusions was this:

"The deeper a child penetrates the formal system, the less likely he or she is to desist from offending."

It can reinforce the very identity that, we say, we want that child to leave behind. It can damage self-worth, weaken trust in institutions and reduce opportunities. It can also increase contact with children in difficulty and create a cycle in which a child begins to see themselves and be seen by others as an offender first. The pattern in Northern Ireland's reoffending data is that, for the 2021 cohort, youth reoffending after diversionary disposals was 21·5%. Compare that with 49·5% after supervised community disposals, with almost half of those released from custody reoffending. For the 2022-23 cohort, the one-year youth reoffending rate was 20·8% following diversionary disposals. Among the small number of young people released from custody in the same year, five out of nine reoffended within the first year. Those statistics do not prove that diversion alone causes better outcomes, because children receiving different disposals will have different levels of need, risk, seriousness of offence and previous contact with the system, but they provide strong, Northern Ireland-specific evidence that deeper justice system involvement is closely associated with worse reoffending outcomes. Northern Ireland should know the value of doing things differently. Our youth conferencing model is internationally recognised as a significant and groundbreaking restorative justice approach. I record my admiration of and gratitude for the work of the Youth Justice Agency. I thank its staff for their time and for sharing with me their expertise and lived experience of working in the field as I prepared amendment No 79. What they do and the outcomes that they achieve are something to be proud of.

Yes.

2,025 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:53 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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