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 5614469

Read the official Assembly record

Text

It is almost as if the Minister and I are synchronised or that we believe some very similar things, because that leads me right on to the recent Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) report on child criminal exploitation. It should be required reading for every single Member of the House who is involved in the debate. When we see a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old involved in disorder, drugs, intimidation or violence, the question should not simply be one of how quickly we can criminalise that child. The questions should be these: who is behind them? Who is benefiting? Who is frightening them? Who is grooming them? Who is sending a child to take risks that an adult cannot take themselves? We have to concede that the CJINI report makes for uncomfortable reading. It is not a pleasant read. It found that there was no mechanism to understand the nature and scale of CCE in Northern Ireland and that specific markers or flags were absent from police and prosecution systems that led to missed opportunities to identify exploitation. It found that children were often treated as suspects rather than as victims, that safeguarding referrals such as the NRM were not always timely and that the child's voice was largely absent from the sample of police records. The report found that the system lacked clear outcome measures to show whether children were being helped, adults disrupted and outcomes improved. We are told by some that raising MACR will create a new incentive for exploitation. Adults are already exploiting children. The answer is not to keep the burden of adult criminality on the child. Rather, it is to build a system around the child that spots exploitation earlier, safeguards the child, supports victims, disrupts the adults and pursues those adults with far more determination.

That relies on the notion that if we raise the MACR, we remove accountability and safeguarding. I do not see that as being the case. The Minister has already been clear that there will be a framework in place, if the law is passed this week and, eventually, put on the statute book. That framework will have to be in place, so we will have a chance to intervene earlier. That is how I see it; that is what I believe a framework would do.

Let me continue for a second. I spoke to Scottish Government officials — it is a little bit on your point. We cannot say that Scotland is exactly the same as Northern Ireland, but there are some similarities, particularly around Glasgow and the organised gangs, especially drug gangs. They did not see a notable increase when they changed their minimum age. It was one of the issues that was brought up before they changed their law — they thought that they would see an influx in the 10- to 12-year-old cohort, but they did not. That gave me reassurance, because their experience is fairly relevant, and it challenges the argument that reform automatically creates a free-for-all for gangs or paramilitaries. I give way.

I do not think that that is relevant to the point that I was making, which is around CCE. That is slightly different. We are not saying that this is removing accountability or removing the victim from the centre. If you had been here, you would have heard me talk about reparation and about how restorative practice can be seen as being the soft option when it is not. Restorative practice is sometimes the harder option. Not all victims think the same, because not all victims experience crime in the same way. I will move on. Child criminal exploitation is not a hypothetical risk created by this amendment. It is the current reality, as evidenced by the CJINI report. If the current system is already failing to identify exploited children consistently, Members should ask themselves this question: is the answer to defend the current law as if it is working, or is it to build a clearer, stronger, child-centred and victim-aware framework that protects children, supports victims and goes after the adults who are doing the exploiting?

Yes.

It is my hope that that is going to be tackled through other pieces of the Minister's Justice Bill. The focus has to be on who is pulling the strings. I was a youth worker in east Belfast in 2012 at the heart of what were called "the flag protests". I will never forget a young person saying to me, "It's the men who tell us to come down here". They pointed to the flat in which the men stood and watched them. The young person went on to say, "They don't get a tag on their ankle, and they don't get a record, but I have". That is at the absolute heart of this. We need to go for those who are pulling the strings and doing the damage. I want to move on from the evidence on criminalisation and reoffending to the practical question that is at the heart of the debate: when does the system first see these children? When should it have seen them? If we are serious about preventing harm, we cannot focus solely on what happens after a child reaches a police station, courtroom or the Youth Justice Agency. We have to look for it earlier, and we have to intervene. It goes back to my response to the Committee Chair: we have to look earlier. What are the warning signs? Who knew that the child was suffering? We cannot keep calling it early intervention if the first meaningful response comes after a child has entered the justice system. That is crisis response.

Across stakeholder engagement in preparing the amendment, the message was clear: the system is meeting too many children too late. Harmful behaviour is often preceded by trauma, poor attendance, family stress, unmet mental health needs, care experience and exploitation. Those are warning signs, and, if we ignore them, we should not be surprised when problems escalate. The Department of Health described many of the children who are in contact with the justice system as children who are already in need, facing adverse childhood experiences, trauma and deprivation. The Safeguarding Board responded to me frankly, saying that we have to move away from asking, "What did you do?", to also asking, "What happened to you?". That is not a soft question, and it is not about just the child; that is a safety question. Without understanding the drivers of a behaviour, we cannot prevent that behaviour from happening. Women's Aid made the same point from the perspective of domestic abuse: that it is too late once a child reaches the criminal justice system because children can absorb fear, coercion and violence long before they can articulate it, learning patterns of control or aggression from their environment. Again, that does not excuse harm, but, if we want to stop it being repeated, we have to intervene before those patterns are set. Responsibility for that spans every Department and every part of society, and it does not just mean criminalisation. The 3ducation evidence tells the same story: schools are already dealing with increasingly complex needs, trauma, absence and safeguarding concerns. The Education Authority (EA) emphasised that it is engaged in a trauma-informed restorative approach, focusing on understanding why a child behaves as they do. As the EA put it, the issue is not the labels but the growing number of children experiencing trauma from an early age. If we label a child without addressing what lies beneath, we solve nothing. If schools are seeing those pressures long before justice involvement, MACR reform is not just a justice issue; it is an education, health, social care, youth work and family support issue. The Department of Health stated that the issues can be identified much earlier and that it sees school absence as a key indicator. Rather than treating school absence as solely a disciplinary issue, it is so much more helpful to put the focus on why a child is not in school, what safety concerns there may be and what support would help at an individual or family level. The data makes that clear. In 2024-25, overall attendance was 92·1%, but we have to look at where that absence is distributed. It is not distributed evenly; it is significantly higher among children with care experience, pupils who are entitled to free school meals, pupils with special educational needs and Irish Traveller children. Whilst we should never reduce children to statistics, the pattern matters. Disconnection from school is often linked to trauma, poverty, unmet need and marginalisation. Early action really makes a difference. That is why I truly believe that a child's first serious intervention should not be with a police officer at a police station or at a court; it should be in a school, with family or in a health or community setting.

The Department of Health has said that most of those children are already known. My point is that, if we criminalise young people at the age of 10, we are missing the opportunity at that point for the issue to be moved out of the justice system and into a health setting. There should be primarily a health response through social services and an education response with regard to what red flags are seen. What early intervention is being put in place for a child at every possible stage and not when it becomes a justice issue? That is my point.

My point is that so much of that already happens, but, when I speak to those who work in the justice system, they say, "We need the law to catch up. We need the law to give us consistency and clarity on what we do that is outside the scope of the justice system. So much of what we're doing is actually a health response. What I'm doing, as a youth worker in a prison, is actually an education response". My point is that we need to look at this holistically first, and then at how we can take it out of a criminalisation frame of reference and move it into an intervention.

Yes.

1,703 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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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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