Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice facility in Auckland has 46 beds, eight of which are for girls. Photo / Michael Craig
Oranga Tamariki officials have admitted some youth are being held in highly restrictive, secure units for longer than allowed under the law, partly due to a lack of training of staff.
A secure unit is a highly restrictive space with a bedroom and other living areas where young people at youth justice or care facilities are often put when they are a risk to themselves or others.
By law, they can be held in this units for up to three days. After that, staff are required to get an formal “extension” from the courts.
However, in response to questions from Labour’s spokeswoman for children Willow-Jean Prime during a parliamentary select committee, Oranga Tamariki admitted sometimes young people are held longer without staff obtaining the appropriate extension.
The department’s Neal Beales said around 5% of extensions of time in a secure unit did not comply with the law.
“Five per cent is still concerning, it should be lower than that, much lower. I think any time we use our most coercive powers, when we are keeping people in any type of custody, I think we should be concerned that we are using those appropriately.”
Figures provided to Prime through written parliamentary questions show from January to July this year, there were 64 extensions to stays at secure units that were done without the proper legal authority.
Of these, 39 were at Korowai Manaaki, an Auckland youth justice facility. There were 14 improper extensions of secure unit stays at Te Puna Wai ō Tuhinapo in Christchurch, and 11 at the Epuni residence in Lower Hutt.
These figures represent admissions into secure units rather than individuals.
Beales said there was “an issue” with stays in secure units being extended without the proper authorisation.
This was due to a number of reasons, he said. Sometimes when somebody is released but is involved in an incident on that same day that requires them to go back into the unit, some staff are not recognising that a court-issued extension is required as “the clock doesn’t start again”.
“So there is a training need here for some of our staff. We have seen over the year quite a lot of turnover in our youth justice residences, which is impacting on some of the skillset that we have, so we are focusing on that.”
Beales said it was necessary to review the legislation that enabled extensions to ensure it was fit for purpose.
“When we see areas where that is not meeting our required legislation or the standard, then there is work to be done.”
Beales said staff had told him some young people would prefer to go into the secure unit, where they get “a lot of attention from staff” and engagement. They could be having issues with other residents, be fearful of others in the residence or have psychosomatic issues that led them to want to be separate from others.
“While we have our current legislation, we must be doing everything we can to make sure we are in line with that,” he said.
“Where we are not, where we have breached, we dig into that and we find out the reasons why, lessons learned – not just accept there has been a breach and move on.”
Scrutiny on the treatment and wellbeing of young people in justice facilities has intensified amid Government moves to introduce military-style “bootcamps” for young offenders, an idea introduced as 2023 election policy by National and Act while in Opposition.
A programme pilot involved 10 recidivist youth offenders spending three months in a youth justice residence in Palmerston North and nine months in the community under the eye of mentors and social workers.
The pilot has drawn widespread criticism from Opposition parties, some academics and abuse survivors, who doubted the efficacy of bootcamp-style programmes and were wary of the abuse linked to previous iterations.
The final evaluation of the Government’s controversial bootcamp pilot revealed a mix of successes and failures in its ability to limit reoffending by some of the country’s most prolific young offenders.
Prime, Labour’s spokeswoman for children, quizzed Children’s Minister Karen Chhour on when the next military-style academy would be held. Prime asked why Chhour “was not being upfront with the public” when the next one “was planned for March”.
Chhour said no “definite decisions” had been made on when it would be held.
“There is planning happening for training staff to prepare and get ready, but no plans have been made on definite dates.”
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.