‘Fitter, faster criminals’: Wide condemnation of National’s youth crime policy

National’s newly announced youth crime policy is receiving wide condemnation from various political parties as “racist” and “classist” methods to deal with young offenders.

The policy, revealed by leader Christopher Luxon in Hamilton today, included creating a new young serious offender category for offenders aged 10-17 who have committed a serious offence like a ram raid at least twice. Consequences would include being sent to a young offender military academy or electronic monitoring.

The academies, another policy branded as new, applied to 15 to 17-year-olds to provide “discipline, mentoring and intensive rehabilitation” for up to 12 months.

A stronger focus on gangs and empowering community groups to break the offending cycle were also included.

Nationally, youth crime was slightly decreasing, but spikes had been observed in Auckland and Waikato. Ram raids, which earlier this year saw a more than 500 per cent increase from previous years, had begun to reduce in prevalence.

While Luxon and other National MPs claim the measures are necessary, members of three other parties are heaping criticism on National’s solutions.

“All it will deliver is fitter, faster criminals,” Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said.

“National is just reheating failed policy.”

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

In 2017, National promised to send up to 50 young offenders to Waiouru military camp each year, to train alongside soldiers.

A review of a similar boot camp about a decade ago found only two of 17 youth offenders sent to controversial facilities had not reoffended.

Justice Minister Kiri Allan said the military academies would only encourage the proliferation of youth crime and claimed National’s policy was a “populist response to a serious issue”.

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson said National was “whipping up stigmatising narratives” that are dangerous and continue intergenerational harm.

“They are racist and classist in [their] narratives and policy proposal.”

Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said National was playing up to the extremes of society and not proposing workable, long-term solutions for whānau.

“Whānau don’t deserve to be kicked around like political balls.”

Amnesty International NZ campaigns director Lisa Woods said she was concerned National’s “tough on crime narratives” risked ignoring the “wealth of evidence” that showed punitive approaches didn’t address youth crime sufficiently.

“When a child does something seriously wrong, it is often because they have been seriously let down by society. This means we need upstream interventions to address the causes of crime, rather than downstream interventions which may fail to address the underlying issues.”

National deputy leader Nicola Willis said the evidence of the academy programme was based on how a young person could not reoffend if they were locked up in a facility.

Asked if she would be comfortable if one of her children was sent to a military academy, Willis said only recidivist offenders would be sent to the facilities.

“If that happened to my child once, it would never happen again.

“These orders are for children who have done serious crimes and ram raids and violent offenders, not once, but at least twice.”

In October, National education spokeswoman Erica Stanford told the AM Show that she opposed an Act Party policy that saw the use of ankle bracelets on very young offenders.

“How are we ever going to change their lives when we’re actually not investing properly in the agencies to change their lives? We’re going to whack an ankle bracelet on them, it just breaks my heart.”

Given her party was now recommending offenders as young as 10 could be electronically monitored, Stanford today claimed the “heartbreak” she had referenced was in fact concerning the overall youth crime climate in New Zealand currently.