Oranga Tamariki will lead and deliver the youth offender pilot that will inform the Government's new boot camps.
Video / NZ Herald
Analysis by Derek Cheng
Derek Cheng is a Multimedia Journalist for New Zealand’s Herald. He values holding those in power to account and shining a light on issues kept in the dark.
The Government will introduce legislation later this year to create the Young Serious Offender category and empower Youth Court judges to send them to new boot camps.
Oranga Tamariki officials supported the view of experts that boot camps are not effective. The way to make them better is to include rehabilitation and reintegration, which are not essential to the boot camp model.
Cabinet agreed with this advice, and also signed off “intrusive” police powers for warrantless arrest, more electronic monitoring, and wider eligibility rules that could leave a $16.5 million funding hole.
ANALYSIS
The Government’s boot camps for serious youth offenders will have the greatest chance of success if they’re small on toughness and big on elements that have little to do with being a boot camp, like addressing trauma.
Minister for Children Karen Chhour unsurprisingly rejected this advice, so officials came back in May with boot camp proposals incorporating those best-practice elements:
Trauma-informed rehabilitation to address the drivers of offending, which often include poor health, housing and education.
Flexible residency, instead of being “fully residential”, to enable offsite community- or iwi-led support.
Engaging offenders’ families and providing intensive support long after they leave.
Cabinet agreed these should be the foundations of the upcoming model.
They also signed off warrantless detention powers for police – which officials opposed – longer supervision orders, and greater use of electronic monitoring. These could create issues inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act (Bora), though it is unclear whether any limits on certain rights might be unreasonable.
Christopher Luxon fine-tuning the boot camps model. Cartoon / Guy Body
In May, Budget 2024 allocated $35 million in operational funding and almost $2m in capital funding over four years for the new regime.
But a few weeks later, ministers decided to widen the eligibility criteria. This would see the estimated number of young offenders jump from 60 to 102 per year, creating a $16.5m shortfall.
Chhour said she wasn’t concerned about this, given the uncertainty over how many young people will be declared a Young Serious Offender (YSO) in the new framework.
“The Budget bid for the development and implementation of the YSO was based on modelling from the Ministry of Justice on youth offending trends. At that stage it was intended to be a broad, and only indicative, number of the likely use of the new YSO declaration.
“I do not have concerns about the overall impact of the modelling on the available funding, as the intention is to monitor and review progress of the [YSO] declaration over several years.”
The problem to address is the small cohort of young offenders who are responsible for a large proportion of youth crime; about 350 teenagers aged between 14 to 17 reoffend within a year of appearing before the Youth Court. Every year, about 100 of them have committed two crimes at the more serious end of the scale.
These are the ones who will be eligible for the YSO designation. The goal is to ensure they face tougher consequences, but also to divert them from a lifetime in the prison pipeline, which would involve lifetimes of social harm and cost the justice system millions of dollars.
The system has programmes for serious repeat child offenders (aged 10 to 13) but is limited when it comes to those aged 14 to 17. This is the gap that Luxon’s policy is trying to bridge.
He hopes it will help achieve his goal of reducing the number of serious and persistent offenders (aged 10 to 17) by 15% by 2029/30.
What went wrong with the last boot camps
There are many lessons from the past, both here and overseas: a 2022 international paper said boot camps were “not effective at reducing recidivism”, while a 2018 New Zealand paper said boot camps “do not work”. Hardline boot camps might even make matters worse, given how most of the participants are likely to be neurodivergent.
New Zealand had “corrective training” camps in the 1980s and 1990s, but by 1997 the reconviction rate was 92%.
The previous National-led Government brought back boot camps in 2010, but within a few years reoffending rates within 12 months were more than 80%.
The main shortcomings were a lack of support to tackle the drivers of dysfunctional behaviour, minimal engagement with families, and little help to reintegrate afterwards.
“The major learning we got out of that was that we didn’t have the community organisations embedded,” Luxon said in July.
“You need to stick with the young person for a year, it’s really intensive. You’ve almost got to have an individual with them the whole time. You’ve got to set up their coming back into the community.”
Minister for Children and Act MP Karen Chhour. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The new boot camps needed a trauma-informed approach, with intensive support for programmes tailored to each offender’s needs, Chhour said in her June Cabinet paper.
“Young people declared to be YSOs will also access an increased length of transitional support including employment, education and/or training pathways. The young person’s family and whānau will also be supported to engage in the intensive response.”
The current boot camp pilot is running under current legislative settings, but the new regime will need new legislation to create the YSO category.
Under Cabinet’s proposal, a Youth Court judge would be able to declare someone a YSO if:
They are aged 14 to 17.
Have had two proven offences punishable by 10 years’ jail (meaning ram-raids would be captured).
Likely to reoffend.
Have had previous interventions that failed.
Ministers initially agreed with officials for the offences to be in the Youth Court, but later widened this to include the District or High Court (which don’t take a young person’s age into account in the same way).
When fully implemented, this would increase the estimated number of eligible offenders from 60 to 102 a year, 80% to 85% of them Māori. This was estimated to cost about $51m over four years in operational funding, $16.5m more than what was allocated in Budget 2024.
Act leader David Seymour and Minister for Children Karen Chhour look at the type of footwear youth at the new military academy pilot will receive. Photo / Rachel Helyer-Donaldson, RNZ
A YSO declaration would last for two years and enable tougher consequences including:
Lengthier supervision orders (including one sending them to a boot camp for up to a year).
Greater judicial monitoring to ensure compliance with conditions (such as drug or alcohol programmes).
Wider use of electronic monitoring, and for longer periods (12 months instead of six).
The declaration can also be extended by up to a year if the YSO commits a further eligible offence, but it must expire when they turn 19.
They can also ask for their declaration to be reviewed after 12 or 18 months, or request the Youth Court to ditch their declaration on humanitarian grounds, such as severe ill health.
Officials’ warning: ‘More intrusive response’
If a Youth Court judge sent a YSO to a youth justice facility or a boot camp, they would be ineligible for early release, which officials flagged as potentially breaching the Bora protection against disproportionately severe treatment.
Officials also opposed warrantless powers for police, who would be able to detain or arrest a YSO if they are suspected of breaching supervision conditions or bail conditions.
This would enable an immediate response to any threat to public safety, but at the expense of Youth Court oversight that a warrant would provide. Such oversight would make YSOs less likely to be arrested for minor or unintentional breaches, or ones where police were mistaken or misusing these powers.
“Oversight would be limited to reviewing arrests after the fact, in which case any harm or impacts on the rights of the young person would have already occurred,” officials said in the Ris.
Ram raids will potentially be captured in the eligibility rules for a Young Serious Offender declaration. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
“Permitting a wider scope for warrantless arrests enables a more intrusive response for low-level breaches of conditions, including unintentional breaches.”
The powers would also increase the likelihood of inequitable treatment for rangatahi Māori, who will be over-represented in the YSO cohort.
“Racial profiling and bias in arrests and the youth justice system may become more significant under these conditions.”
Officials flagged other rights “likely to be limited” by the powers, or by electronic monitoring. These include the protection from unreasonable search or seizure, from arbitrary arrest, or the rights of young people to be dealt with in an age-appropriate way.
In her Cabinet paper, Chhour said the bill was yet to be Bora-vetted, so it remained to be seen whether any such limits might be unjustified.
But there were mitigating factors including judicial discretion in making a YSO declaration, and removal from a boot camp for “compassionate or humanitarian reasons”.
No 14-year-olds at boot camps
A Youth Court judge could send a YSO to a boot camp, but only if they’re aged 15 to 17.
Cabinet agreed with officials in rejecting a fully residential order, which would allow flexibility for YSOs to attend offsite rehabilitation and education courses - including overnight.
“Officials do not consider that a fully residential Military Style Academy order would result in reduced reoffending or improve public safety in the long term,” the Ris said.
Cabinet wants police to be have warrantless powers to detain or arrest a YSO if they suspect the offender has breached the conditions of their supervison order. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The tailored programmes are expected to involve intensive support both at the camp and after they leave, when they would be subject to a follow-up supervision order for at least six months.
Staff would have the power to use force to prevent a YSO from being harmed, harming themselves, or harming others. Force would also be permitted to stop them from fleeing.
When the new camps will be ready is up in the air.
“The intention is this legislation [to enable the regime] will be introduced later this year, after which timings will become clearer,” Chhour said.
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the Press Gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
