New Zealand experience and international evidence say boot camps don’t work. So why is the Government setting them up? Jamie Morton reports.
New Zealand has a 50-year track record with military-style boot camps for unruly youths - and it’s hardly a glowing one.
The “corrective training” camps of the 1980s and 1990s were purposed as short, sharp shocks to steer young people away from crime.
But by 1997, the reconviction rate among its participants was a staggering 92 per cent, and the programme was scrapped a few years later.
When the fifth National government brought back boot camps, it promised something “fundamentally different” to past failures.
The Military-style Activity Camp programme, introduced in 2010 and run by the NZ Defence Force, did show some initial promise at cutting the frequency and seriousness of its candidates’ crime.
Yet, by July 2011, just two of the 17 youth offenders sent there had not re-offended.
Within a few years, re-offending rates among graduates within 12 months stood at more than 80 per cent.
Amid another election campaign that put high-profile youth crime in the crosshairs, National re-booted the boot camp in late 2022.
Its “Young Offender Military Academies”, costed at $25m a year, would come with schooling, counselling, drug and alcohol treatment, mentoring, cultural support and family case workers.
Its touted point-of-difference was its modelling on the defence force’s successful Limited Service Volunteer courses, aimed at fostering discipline and self-esteem.
But these ran for just six weeks – National’s programme involved teens spending up to a year – and were voluntary, rather than sentenced stints.
Then came last week’s announcement that the pledged academies would be piloted from mid-year, but details have been light.
Participants would be “repeat serious youth offenders” already in the justice system, with the Government working on wider legislative changes that would create special designations for such offenders.
Instead of the Ministry of Justice setting them up as first proposed, the task has been handed to Oranga Tamariki, which didn’t respond to specific Herald questions.
The Herald also asked the office of Minister for Children Karen Chhour where and how the programme would be run; what evidence it was based on; who would be selected for it; how much it would cost; how much of it involved boot camps; how it would be assessed; and whether it would be scrapped if results did not meet expectations.
Again, these questions went unanswered: Chhour said in an emailed statement it would have a “military-style component” along with a “rehabilitative and trauma-informed care approach”.
“What the programme will look like is still being worked through, but I’m confident we can deliver a programme that will provide the real change needed for many youth offenders.”
Otago University social psychologist Professor Joe Boden didn’t share Chhour’s optimism.
“There is more than enough evidence to suggest that this particular policy will fail and will cost a great deal of money while still failing.”
He pointed the Herald to our most recent boot camp’s 83 per cent recidivism rate - along with studies from the US and UK concluding that “shocking” youth out of crime delivered poor results.
One recent report by renowned Cambridge University criminologist Professor David Farrington and colleagues – incidentally carried on Oranga Tamariki’s own website – singled out boot camps as the only one of 12 reviewed interventions for youth offenders not worth implementing.
Another discussion paper on youth offending from 2018, led by then-chief scientist Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, found boot camps “do not work and ‘scared straight’ programmes have been shown to increase crime”.
“Youth need alternative, pro-social ways to achieve engagement and social approval.”
Victoria University criminology lecturer Dr Sarah Monod de Froideville said that, despite youth crime having trended down for two decades, the boot-camp concept played to public angst over much-publicised ram raids.
During elections, young people became “political hot potatoes”.
“Of all the research I’ve looked at, boot camps may be effective in the short-term with certain types of kids: they’ll respond to physical activity and good nutrition when it’s being supervised in that way,” she said.
“But as soon as they go back into communities that are problematic for whatever reason, it’s back to normal ... it’s not a change-maker.”
“Absolutely not,” Boden said.
He argued that intervention programmes needed to reach young people at a much earlier age, particularly after starting school, when serious behaviour problems started to become obvious but weren’t yet “ingrained”.
“I tend to think of these sorts of boot-camp programmes as a ‘finishing school’ for criminals; by the time a young person reaches this point, they are already well down the road of offending.”
Aaron Hendry, director of youth organisation Kick Back, said that while there was no silver bullet for youth offending, a lack of understanding of its environmental drivers was “causing a chasm between us and what could actually work”.
Pulling young people out of their communities, Hendry said, could be “retraumatising”.
“I’ve worked with young people who have caused significant harm in our communities, and when we’ve been able to get to the root cause of what is going on in that kid’s life – and understanding that and responding appropriately – I’ve seen immense change.”
Dr Greg Newbold was well aware that boot camps haven’t worked in the past: the University of Canterbury criminologist went through one himself in the late 1970s.
“Mum said I was as meek as a kitten when I got out,” he said, adding it was another five years before he was reconvicted.
He wasn’t necessarily against the new proposition, arguing that some change was needed to deter young people from serious crime.
“Almost anything is better than the current situation, where some young people feel they can commit serious crimes, brag about it on social media, and walk away without consequences.”
Like others, he agreed there needed to be more attention paid to the post-release handling of youth offenders – and the environmental conditions that led to the offending.
“Parental accountability needs to be part of the solution.”
Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.
