Speaker 1: Kielder.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The government
Speaker 2: will introduce legislation later this year to create the Young
Speaker 2: Serious Offender category and empower youth court judges to send
Speaker 2: them to new boot camps. It's all while Oranga Tamariki
Speaker 2: officials supported the view of experts that boot camps are
Speaker 2: not effective. So why have every other iteration of boot
Speaker 2: camps in this country failed?
Speaker 1: And how might this government make them better?
Speaker 2: Today on the Front Page, Herald's senior writer Derek Chang
Speaker 2: is with us to discuss our tattered history of boot
Speaker 2: camps and what officials have warned the government about them
Speaker 2: this time round. First off, Derek, this is a subject
Speaker 2: we've spoken about before and one we're both really interested in.
Speaker 1: Can you remind us of how we got here.
Speaker 3: There's a bit of context there, because obviously this is
Speaker 3: not the first time we've heard about boot camps for
Speaker 3: young serious offenders. It became quite a political spotlight during
Speaker 3: all the ram raids, which had a few different contributing factors.
Speaker 3: One was all the lockdowns increased truancy, kids out of
Speaker 3: the classroom, another was the cost of living crisis, and
Speaker 3: we had this massive spike in ram raids and you know,
Speaker 3: the Labor government at first we were like, well, everything's fine,
Speaker 3: everything's fine. Youth offending has been going down, it's been
Speaker 3: going down. And then when Christopher Luxeman was the opposition leader,
Speaker 3: he made an announcement that National was going to bring
Speaker 3: back boot camps for young serious offenders. And I think
Speaker 3: the context is important there because ram raids were going
Speaker 3: through the roof. They were on the front page of
Speaker 3: the papers all the time, they were a big deal.
Speaker 3: So obviously as soon as lux And announced these boot camps,
Speaker 3: everyone jumped on him and saying they don't work, we've
Speaker 3: tried them before, they failed, sometimes they make it worse.
Speaker 3: And then he got accused of like you know, slogan
Speaker 3: ering for the election, but in any case, he campaigned
Speaker 3: on it and it was part of his pledge card
Speaker 3: and then when they formed the coalition they went straight
Speaker 3: into it. So we've been here before. New Zealand has
Speaker 3: had boot camps before, they've been run overseas before. The
Speaker 3: general consensus among academia is that they don't work, and
Speaker 3: if they do work, it's generally because they have a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of features in them that aren't really the
Speaker 3: essential characteristics of boot camps. You know, people think of
Speaker 3: boot camps and they think army drills and obstacle courses
Speaker 3: and dual sergeants yelling do drop and give me twenty
Speaker 3: and there's a whole lot bunch of discipline and tough love.
Speaker 2: Really, what's gone wrong with boot camps in the past, Well.
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of different studies that officials pointed
Speaker 3: to in their advice to the Minister for Children Karen Shaw.
Speaker 3: Generally is also a look at the New Zealand ones
Speaker 3: as well. Sir Peter Gluckman wrote a paper in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen where he just basically said they do not work
Speaker 3: and the scarce straight tactics can even make things worse.
Speaker 4: If you actually look at Sir Peter Glutman's entire comment.
Speaker 4: He said that they don't work in who he didn't
Speaker 4: think they'd work well in isolation. We agree with him.
Speaker 4: That's why we put a twelve month course in place
Speaker 4: with follow up support for that young person when they
Speaker 4: come out, to make sure they've got the best possible
Speaker 4: chance to launch. Because the one thing that we do
Speaker 4: want to make sure is that they don't. It't the
Speaker 4: fifteen to seventeen year olds. They are the ones that
Speaker 4: most danger of coming into an adult criminal justice system.
Speaker 4: Once they're in the adult criminal justice system, they're much
Speaker 4: harder to rehabilitate.
Speaker 3: So we've got to talk about who goes to these
Speaker 3: bird camps, right, And these are the worst of the
Speaker 3: world defenders, but they're also societies most neglected. They are
Speaker 3: probably suffering from intergenerational trauma. They might have contemplated suicide,
Speaker 3: They're likely to be a victim of sexual or physical abuse,
Speaker 3: and they're probably a neurodivergent in some way or even
Speaker 3: have like substances challenges from a young age. So throwing
Speaker 3: them into a boot camp where someone yells at them,
Speaker 3: going back to that Supeter Gluckman quote, you know that
Speaker 3: kind of scare tactic isn't really going to just suddenly
Speaker 3: change someone's behavior, because their behavior is going to be
Speaker 3: really complex, lots of different unmet needs and what they
Speaker 3: need to address the drivers are offending is really complicated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you looked into exactly who will be the cohort
Speaker 2: being sent to these camps.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a bit about that.
Speaker 2: I recall seeing Urana Tamariki briefing in December about the
Speaker 2: backgrounds of these severe abuse and neglect cases.
Speaker 3: That briefing includes just a snapshot, so you know, there
Speaker 3: are there are I don't know, probably tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of young people who go through the youth justice system
Speaker 3: or dealt with by police every year, young people being
Speaker 3: like children ten to thirteen and young people fourteen to seventeen.
Speaker 3: Most of them get diversion from you know, police don't
Speaker 3: prosecute those who are prosecuted, most of those don't end
Speaker 3: up in the youth court, and even most of them
Speaker 3: who do go to the youth court still eventually get
Speaker 3: a discharge. There's a big focus on restorative justice. This
Speaker 3: is the non punitive emphasis that has really led to
Speaker 3: youth depending dropping since two thousand and seven, right up
Speaker 3: until two thousand and twenty one twenty two, and that's
Speaker 3: actually been Studies have shown that has had ongoing repercussions
Speaker 3: where we're young adults, like convictions for young adults since
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine have been decreasing. So what I
Speaker 3: was trying to say is that of all of those
Speaker 3: teens of thousands of people who might you know come
Speaker 3: to the attention of police or the justice system. There's
Speaker 3: only three hundred and fifty fourteen to seventeen year olds
Speaker 3: who go to youth court and reoffend within a year.
Speaker 3: So the people who really on a somebody, he said,
Speaker 3: we're likely to qualify for this young serious offender designation
Speaker 3: as a special category that requires new legislation. There's about
Speaker 3: one hundred of them who would have committed like two
Speaker 3: serious crimes. And who are these people? Eighty percent have
Speaker 3: a confirmed or suspected mental health or disability diagnosis, twenty
Speaker 3: percent have tried to kill themselves, ninety percent have significant
Speaker 3: learning difficulties. Half of the boys have been physically harmed
Speaker 3: three times in the past year, so they are almost neglected.
Speaker 5: Overseas. Reports suggest ne're adverse and trauma are problems facing
Speaker 5: most young offenders.
Speaker 1: Being yelled at. That's probably been their environment, sinless they
Speaker 1: grew up.
Speaker 3: Get back down on the press upposition.
Speaker 5: At last week's media stand up at the Youth Justice
Speaker 5: facility hosting the boot camp, there was hope this had
Speaker 5: been taken into account.
Speaker 2: Why are so many people against the idea of boot camps?
Speaker 1: What have officials said to this government so far.
Speaker 3: I mean, people's main beef is that they don't work,
Speaker 3: really and that they're really expensive, and why throw a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of money at something that is not very
Speaker 3: likely to succeed? And this is kind of exactly what
Speaker 3: Luxin said about labor on the campaign, right, and not
Speaker 3: without cause. Why throw money at something that doesn't work?
Speaker 3: And if you look at our history, we had a
Speaker 3: bunch of boot camps in the eighties and nineties where
Speaker 3: the reconviction rate was ninety two percent. John Key had
Speaker 3: a bunch that ran from two thousand and ten where
Speaker 3: the reoffending rate was more than eighty percent. We also
Speaker 3: have had when they were called outdoor activity camps for
Speaker 3: those in state care, where people were basically tortured and abused.
Speaker 3: So we don't have a great history of success. In fact,
Speaker 3: there's a history of abuse. But people like the idea
Speaker 3: it's a tough on crime thing. It's like, well, these
Speaker 3: guys have committed crimes and we got to have consequences
Speaker 3: for that. So I guess it's not very surprising when
Speaker 3: politicians reached for that particular.
Speaker 2: Ever, what makes this latest iteration of boot camps different
Speaker 2: to the others? What has Chris Luxon said about them.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because in July he started this. You know,
Speaker 3: I've never called them boot camps, and it's a media thing,
Speaker 3: but that's actually not true. He called them boot camps
Speaker 3: in his campaign speech last year. He his pledge card
Speaker 3: actually had the word boot camps on it. But the
Speaker 3: shifting language there is basically, well, we've accepted that the
Speaker 3: official bias and or the expert advice, and the key
Speaker 3: to a successful boot camp is basically to make it
Speaker 3: as un boot camp like as possible. So it means
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be fully residential. It's going to
Speaker 3: need a lot of support, intensive multi agent agency support,
Speaker 3: community providers, EWE providers. It's going to have like tailored
Speaker 3: individual programs because each one of these people are going
Speaker 3: to have really highly complex needs. They're going to need
Speaker 3: probably counseling, something to address their trauma. So all of
Speaker 3: these aspects have been used in some boot camps in
Speaker 3: the past, maybe not in New Zealand but overseas. But again,
Speaker 3: typically it's not what you think of when you hear
Speaker 3: the word boot camps. So he's that's how he's describing them.
Speaker 3: It's a military style Academy, and Karen Shaw even said
Speaker 3: in July when she announced the pilot that will inform
Speaker 3: the eventual ones that will be based on new legislation,
Speaker 3: she said, well, it's it's not really about punishment. It's
Speaker 3: about giving these guys as much support as possible and
Speaker 3: that they've never had in their life.
Speaker 6: We've looked overseas and we've looked at what we've already
Speaker 6: done in New Zealand. So there was a MAC program
Speaker 6: and there was also the LSP which continues now, but
Speaker 6: it's more of a voluntary program for people who have
Speaker 6: put themselves forward for that. There is a lot of
Speaker 6: evidence that says while they're on these programs that it
Speaker 6: shows some positive results. It allows these young people to
Speaker 6: have stability, It allows these young people to have certainty
Speaker 6: about what's going to happen on a day to day basis.
Speaker 6: But what we haven't done well in the past is
Speaker 6: actually instead of sending them back to the same environment
Speaker 6: that they came from and just saying you're on your way,
Speaker 6: where we've done a bit, and step in and wrap
Speaker 6: around them once they leave the program, you haven't done
Speaker 6: that well.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, I think with this iteration as well.
Speaker 2: They've touted it as being similar to one that the
Speaker 2: NZDF run, which has been quite successful, but.
Speaker 1: That's been voluntary and I know.
Speaker 2: In August news Talk z BS, Demelza Jackson reported the
Speaker 2: government's newly launched military style academies will have actually no
Speaker 2: military personnel working at the coal face with the young offenders.
Speaker 2: The Minister of a Children, Karen Shaw, said that they
Speaker 2: won't be any New Zealand Defense for staff working directly
Speaker 2: with the young people on the pilots. So there's a
Speaker 2: bit of mismanagement in I guess how these are.
Speaker 1: Actually going to work and what they're going to look like.
Speaker 3: Right, well, that's part of the sales pitch, I guess
Speaker 3: once they became government, or even on the campaign trail
Speaker 3: the national people Mark Mitchell, including the police spokesman at
Speaker 3: the time and the Police Minister. Now he talked about
Speaker 3: the LSV program that they have force ran, but again,
Speaker 3: as you say, it was very different. It was voluntary.
Speaker 3: I think it was six weeks and when Demilsa ran
Speaker 3: that story, they were very much like no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: The Defense Force has been highly involved in the design
Speaker 3: of what we are going to do and that might
Speaker 3: be true, but the Cabinet paper basically says it's an
Speaker 3: online at somebody he run show with lots of input
Speaker 3: from the Minstry of Justice and lots of other agencies
Speaker 3: as well. But the Defense Force certainly isn't very prominent
Speaker 3: in those documents, and r is the ALI Speed Program.
Speaker 2: So all of this comes under the Young Serious Offender category.
Speaker 2: So that's how they're getting it through Parliament, right, can
Speaker 2: you explain what this is?
Speaker 3: So they're basically saying, well, these guys, the current system
Speaker 3: doesn't really cater for them, so we have to create
Speaker 3: something entirely new, a completely new regime, and to do that,
Speaker 3: we're going to call it Young Serious Offender Category. Which
Speaker 3: official was actually said was that they tried to get
Speaker 3: them to shange the name because equivalent systems in Australia,
Speaker 3: the YSO label became a bit of a badge of honor. Anyway,
Speaker 3: they stuck with the YSO thing, and there's various ways
Speaker 3: you can be eligible. It's from fourteen to seventeen year
Speaker 3: olds likely to reoffend have had previous interventions that have
Speaker 3: not succeeded, and the main thing is that they have
Speaker 3: to have had to proven offenses. Punishable by ten years
Speaker 3: jail at least, and that will capture ram rays as well. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: officials and ministers. Ministers actually agreed with officials to have
Speaker 3: those offenses and the youth court only, but then they
Speaker 3: later decided to add any such offenses in the adult
Speaker 3: courts to strict and High court. Officials didn't want that
Speaker 3: because if you go through the youth court, then basically
Speaker 3: whatever comes out of the youth court takes account of
Speaker 3: your age. So if you have two offenses in the
Speaker 3: district court, which you know, if they're serious enough, you
Speaker 3: have to go to the district court and you get
Speaker 3: designated young serious offender, then you might not have had
Speaker 3: the kind of interventions that are age appropriate. And by
Speaker 3: including the adult courts it actually broadens the modeling the
Speaker 3: estimated number who will qualify. So when the legislation goes
Speaker 3: through and the policy is fully implemented, the estimated number
Speaker 3: jumps from sixty to one hundred and two every year,
Speaker 3: and that actually the estimated cost of that is sixteen
Speaker 3: and a half million dollars more than was allocated in
Speaker 3: budget twenty twenty four. However, you know there's a lot
Speaker 3: of uncertainty there it's who gets a YSO designation will
Speaker 3: be up to the Youth Court judge, so there's a
Speaker 3: lot of discretion there. It's still and Ministerture basically said, well,
Speaker 3: we'll be monitoring it, with the implication being that if
Speaker 3: we need to put more money into it than we can.
Speaker 3: So if you get a YSO declaration, that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 3: mean you go to a boot camp, but it enables
Speaker 3: the Youth Court judge to hand down a tougher sentence,
Speaker 3: like a supervision order that's longer than any that they
Speaker 3: can currently give out, one of which would be to
Speaker 3: send them to a boot camp up to a year.
Speaker 3: There's a whole bunch of judicial monitoring to ensure compliance
Speaker 3: with your conditions like having to go to a drug
Speaker 3: program for example. And there's much wider use of electronic monitoring,
Speaker 3: which is quite controversial as well because currently it's hardly
Speaker 3: used it all. It can be used, but it's barely
Speaker 3: used at all, and under the new legislation or the
Speaker 3: new regime rather it can apply for odd months and
Speaker 3: that raises a whole bunch of tensions with the Bill
Speaker 3: of Rights Act protection against unreasonable search and seizure. But
Speaker 3: we don't have a bill yet that would implement this regime,
Speaker 3: so we don't have a borer vetting of the spell,
Speaker 3: and we don't know whether any of these limits on
Speaker 3: rights are unjustified.
Speaker 1: So Derek, what happens from here?
Speaker 2: When are we likely to see these boot camps actually
Speaker 2: up and running, And have we got any idea about
Speaker 2: actually where they'll be, what facilities will be used.
Speaker 3: No, that's a big open question at the moment. There's
Speaker 3: currently the pilot obviously that's going on, and that will
Speaker 3: inform the boot camp. The current pilot which is in
Speaker 3: a youth justice residency their PARTMPS North. I think that's
Speaker 3: under the current legislative setting. So they're going to be
Speaker 3: The actual boot camps are going to be quite different
Speaker 3: to those ones. And the pilot is a three month
Speaker 3: in residence and then nine months in community with lots
Speaker 3: of rap around support. So I guess the principles of it,
Speaker 3: they say, I mean, this is kind of like this
Speaker 3: is what Odong Tamicky officials wanted the government to do
Speaker 3: in the first place. They said, well, you can give
Speaker 3: you can provide all these bricks, best practice components that
Speaker 3: are evidence based without having a boot camp at all,
Speaker 3: And the current boot camp pilot is at a Youth
Speaker 3: Justice residence, so it's not a fully residential place, it's
Speaker 3: not a secure setting, and they're basically they're basically the
Speaker 3: trial is what the officials wanted the government to do
Speaker 3: in the first place. So that still has about nine
Speaker 3: and a half months to run, so there will be
Speaker 3: a question about where these boot camps will be, how
Speaker 3: many there might be. And the timeline is completely as
Speaker 3: well because the government still has to introduce a bill
Speaker 3: that will enable this regime to be implemented, which will
Speaker 3: go through a whole SOLI committee process, and once that
Speaker 3: bill has passed, I guess around that time that the
Speaker 3: pilot will finish and then a youth Court judge will
Speaker 3: be able to designate someone a Yso what.
Speaker 2: If official has actually warned the government about regarding these
Speaker 2: new police powers.
Speaker 3: The main warning there is that Cabinet signed off a
Speaker 3: bunch of warrantless powers of detention and arrest for the police.
Speaker 3: So usually the police will go to the youth court
Speaker 3: to get a warrant and that gives a bunch of
Speaker 3: judicial oversight, some safeguards. But while you're waiting for a warrant. Say,
Speaker 3: you know, if one of these guys has escaped a
Speaker 3: boot camp or something, or has you know, reached a
Speaker 3: supervision order in some way, then maybe there's a public
Speaker 3: safety risk. So the government's basically decided that the ability
Speaker 3: of police to have an immediate response and detain or
Speaker 3: arrest one of the way ss without a warrant is
Speaker 3: more important. Officials oppose this because they said there might
Speaker 3: be a really a mining bridge, it could be a
Speaker 3: completely unintentional breach, or the police might have been mistaken,
Speaker 3: or they might have been and they might just be
Speaker 3: misusing their powers. There was a quote from the official
Speaker 3: documents where it basically says racial profiling and bias and
Speaker 3: arrests and the youth justice system may become more significant
Speaker 3: under these conditions. So it's a trade off. You allow
Speaker 3: police to have an immediate response, but that comes at
Speaker 3: the expense of a lack of oversight. And this is
Speaker 3: one of the things that officials said about potential tensions
Speaker 3: with the Bill of Rights Act, which has protections from
Speaker 3: arbitrary arrest and detention, for example, and also for the
Speaker 3: rights of young people to be dealt with in an
Speaker 3: age appropriate way.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining US daring.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at Enzeed Herald dot co dot nz. The Front Page
Speaker 2: is produced by Ethan Siles with sound engineer Patty Fox.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio
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Speaker 2: for another look behind the headlines.