A lawyer and advocate has hit out at the Government's plan to pilot military-style boot camps for young offenders, saying the idea is "reheating something that has never had any success and really causes long-term harm".
Children's Minister Karen Chhour announced yesterday that the camps will be running by the middle of this year.
"It will have a military-style component as well as a rehabilitative and trauma-informed care approach to help these young people turn their lives around and reduce their risk of reoffending," she said.
"Oranga Tamariki will lead and deliver the programme, working with providers where they have appropriate capability and expertise, and alongside other government departments in a multi-agency approach to ensure it is a well-rounded programme."
Lawyer Amanda Hill, who has represented abuse in state care survivors, was scathing in her assessment of the plan on Breakfast this morning.
"I'm appalled that this idea has come back around again after generations of failed attempts," she said.
The previous National government introduced boot camps for young criminals in 2008 — however an analysis found that 85-87% of those in the programme went on to reoffend within two years.
Hill doesn't have "much hope at all" that this time will be any different.
"It really is reheating something that has never had any success and really causes long-term harm," she said.
"What we know from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care... they become really abusive, because there are people there who aren't equipped to deal with young people who have complex needs.
"It might start out with good intentions, but often there's a lot of physical and verbal abuse [and] there's a lot of hierarchy involved, because military involves hierarchy.
"Even if you're not really part of the military, you're just playing at it, you still use these hierarchies and what happens is that the older kids become enforcers and perpetrate abuse on the smaller and younger ones."
Pointing to other similar programmes in the past, Hill said they become "dumping grounds for all sorts of kids".
And the measure will increase crime in the long term, Hill continued, calling for a more wrap-around solution in the community.
"These are being sold as short-term punishment," she said of the camps.
"When you take a young person out of their community and out of their family, and isolate them for the purposes of punishment, you then have to take them back and nothing's ever done to change the situation that they came from.
"You take them out of sight and out of mind, and you satisfy that short-term desire for punishment — and you bring that young person back into the same situation angrier, fitter, and less concerned about what they're gonna do next."
'They're a danger to the community' - Government
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon first introduced his military camp plans in 2022. At the time, when Luxon was Opposition leader, he said the camps would be reserved for youth offenders that commit more violent or destructive crimes.
A 1News poll in December 2022 found a majority of Kiwi voters would support military boot camps for serious youth offenders.
"They're a danger to the community and they're a danger to themselves," Police Minister Mark Mitchell told RNZ this morning.
"If we don't invest in them, they'll end up in the adult system.
"We don't want to give up on these young people.
"It's a big intervention in their lives and I think it's one that's going to be extremely positive because the reality is whatever is happening to them back in their homes is not working."
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