New Zealand Human Rights Commission Submission to the CAT in relation to NZ’s 6th periodic review legislative protections available to young people aged 17 years. The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989 (“CYPF Act”), is the key piece of legislation relating to detention of children and young people up to the age of 17. Despite recommendations by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child3 and the Committee to extend the protection measures under the CYPF Act to include 17-yearolds, this has not occurred. 13. There has been a raft of recent corrections legislation which has extended restrictions upon the rights of people who are deprived of liberty. For example:  The Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act, passed in 2010, effectively disenfranchises all sentenced prisoners. Until this law change, all New Zealand prisoners serving a sentence of more than three years had been unable to vote while incarcerated.  The Corrections Amendment Act 2013 makes a number of changes to corrections legislation. Among other things, that Act lessens the oversight processes relating to the use of mechanical restraints and extends the situations in which intrusive strip search powers may be used.  The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005 deals with the awarding of compensation to prisoners for breaches of their rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the Human Rights Act 1993 and the Privacy Act 1993. The Act restricts the awarding of compensation to exceptional cases and only to the extent that it is necessary to provide effective redress. Restrictions on compensation include that the plaintiff has first made reasonable use of available internal and external complaints mechanisms and that other remedies are used if they could provide effective redress. Compensation funds are subject to a claims process by victims, before becoming available to a prisoner. 14. The SPT voiced particular concern about the Bail Amendment Act which removes the presumption of bail for 17 – 20 years old who have previously served a sentence 3 Committee on the Rights of the Child's, Concluding Observations in relation to New Zealand’s 4 th and 5th periodic reports, CRC/C/NZL/CO/3-4, 201, http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/CRC-C-NZL-CO-3-4.pdf 9