‘Military Boot Camps’ for Young Offenders to Be Operational by Mid-Year, NZ Government Pledges

People shopping in the CBD in Auckland, New Zealand, on May 18, 2022. Phil Walter/Getty Images

In fulfilment of its campaign pledge to crack down on youth offending in its first 100 days, New Zealand’s new government said the first “boot camp” will begin operating by the middle of this year.

Announcing the move, Children’s Minister Karen Chhour said the National-led coalition was “committed to creating more tools to respond to the most serious and persistent young offenders. This includes the establishment of military-style academies and the creation of a new ‘young serious offender’ designation.”

The programme will begin with a pilot that has both a military-style component and “a rehabilitative and trauma-informed care approach” to reduce the risks of reoffending.

Oranga Tamariki (the Ministry for Children and Young People) will run it, alongside other agencies and providers that are deemed to have the appropriate skills.

Behaviour Has Consequences

Ms. Chhour said the government believed it was important that young people realised their behaviour had consequences. Still, they would also be given the chance to be part of “a disciplined and structured environment” that aimed to assist them in taking a new path.

“I’m confident this programme will deliver the real change needed for many youth offenders,” she said.

The programme would be created and overseen by Ms. Chhour and her colleagues Paul Goldsmith (justice minister), Judith Collins (attorney general), and Mark Mitchell (police minister).

Cabinet is also looking at legislative changes that will allow stronger consequences for young people committing crimes.

The previous John Key-led National government also tried boot camps.

Former police officer, parole board member, and National Party minister, the late Chester Borrows told RNZ in 2022 that there had been some positive effects, but it usually didn’t last long. He said the solution to youth crime was better social support that the country must be prepared to pay for.

Previous Attempts Have Failed

Then-termed “Military-style Activity Camps” (MAC), the previous programme was run by the New Zealand Defence Force and designed to provide intensive wraparound support to 40 of the most serious and persistent young male offenders each year. Started in 2010, by July 2011 just two of the 17 youth offenders sent there had not re-offended.

A 2015 report from the Ministry of Social Development found that half of the MAC graduates had re-offended within four months of exiting the programme. Within 12 months, 86 percent had re-offended.

The same year, the prime minister’s chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, said there was no evidence that programmes such as boot camps, restorative justice, and teaching life skills were working.

Boot camps were first introduced in New Zealand in 1971. A decade later they were rebranded as “Corrective Training”—structured as a three-month sentence for males and females between the ages of 15 and 20. A report revealed that 71 percent of first-year graduates committed further crimes.

By 1997, the re-conviction rate after five years was 92 percent, or three times the reoffending rate of the general prison population.

In June of that year, National’s then corrections minister, Paul East, said a review of Corrective Training had confirmed the sentence was doing little to reduce youth re-offending.