"I'm hoping to get out and change my life" were the words of then 17-year-old Nanaia Bishop, who TVNZ Chief Correspondent John Campbell has met again four years on - a young offender who managed to break the cycle.
The probability a serious youth offender has offended before is frighteningly high, and they're statistically likely to offend again.
When John met Nanaia, who was in youth prison for aggravated robberies and stealing cars, four years ago she told him she wanted something more: "I'm hoping to get out. And um, change my life...I wanna be a beauty therapist," she said.
Her childhood had been routinely violent and she'd ended up in a place where some are broken beyond hope.
And yet today, four years on, Nanaia is a qualified makeup artist.
She says acceptance into the course was a turning point for her, "because I didn't do good at school, I used to wag and all of that stuff. And even just to come into a course and actually be welcomed, somewhere I fit because I liked it. Because I had a passion for it. That's where it started."
Nanaia beat the odds. As John puts it: "A girl who did ugly [became] a woman who does beautiful."
Watch the full story above, and read John Campbell's exclusive interview with locked up teen ram-raiders here.
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