Will the Govt's bootcamps help teen offenders or make them worse?

While some hail the bootcamps launching Monday as a timely solution to youth crime, critics argue military-style detention is an ill fit for many teens which could lead to reoffending. Gill Higgins reports.

On Monday morning as you start your day, 10 young men will enter Te Au Rere A Tonga, a youth justice residence in Palmerston North, for the first time. I say young men, but with an age range of 15 to 18, they're really just kids. Kids with at least two serious offences to their names, but still full of impulsivity and bravado, and yet to work out who they really are.

It will be the first day of the Government’s Military-Style Academy Pilot; most people know it by the shorthand: a bootcamp. With all forms of state welfare institutions under a harsh spotlight this week, Children’s Minister Karen Chhour promises this iteration will be radically different from those run by previous National governments. There are signs it will be, but there are also concerns that it will only work for a small, select group of the youths who pass through it.

Chhour says it will be less military-focused and punishment-based. Those changes are welcome, but critics worry some young offenders are too damaged to benefit from three months away from their communities, even though mentoring and follow-up support are promised as part of the scheme.

Leigh Henderson, who chairs the Fetal Acohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Care Action Network, is one of those critics. Her adopted son lives with FASD, and a high percentage of young offenders have the condition. They’re also more likely than the general population to have other neurodevelopmental disabilities – things like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), dyslexia or a brain injury. In Leigh’s opinion “no child with a neurodisability should be entering a justice system”.  

When Chhour showed media around the facility in Palmerston North a week ago, she reassured those present by saying: “If (young offenders) do have disabilities or they do have certain behaviours, there are some exclusions to the programme because we don't want to do more harm than good”.

We followed up with her office who explained that only those with complex mental health conditions will be excluded. Just having a neurodisability won’t prevent a young person from being signed up. Recruits will be assessed by a clinical psychologist and given an individualised care plan.

Leigh Henderson doesn’t think that’s right. She says, “I don’t believe the military aspect is appropriate because it will be based on a level of obedience and there’s a lack of accommodation for brain impairments.”

Teowai Te Moana-Clayton would attest to that. She’s not a youth offender, but she did volunteer for the Limited Service Volunteer programme run by the New Zealand Defence Force. This is the scheme that Prime Minister Chris Luxon and Police Minister Mark Mitchell have referred to as a kind of blueprint for the new bootcamp. During the election campaign, Mitchell told RNZ “The LSV program has been very successfully run for decades, and they're dealing with young people that are into crime. Some of them have been in jail.”

But mostly they’re not. LSV is aimed at an older age group, 18- to 25-year-olds, and it’s focused on those who are unemployed and want help as they try to find a job. One might imagine it would be a less severe version of a serious young offenders bootcamp. But it proved harmful to Te Moana-Clayton who suffers from FASD and, like many offenders, lived through a traumatic childhood where she moved from one foster home to another.

FASD is a condition with a wide range of symptoms. For Te Moana-Clayton, it means she struggles to follow more than one instruction and has a limited concept of time. At LSV, psychological screening did flag her neuro-disability, but she says she wasn’t treated differently.

From day one, she found the quickfire instructions and shouting stressful. She couldn’t keep up. When she was ordered along with others to present for inspection, her shoelaces were untied. Punishment was 20 push ups, but not for her, for her team.

“I just felt awful, I felt everyone hated me," she says.

Her mental health deteriorated as she tried not to mess up. By day six, she was showing signs of being suicidal, and left.

Te Moana-Clayton's foster parents Gythlian and Martin Loveday have a long history of helping children – Gythlian as a probation officer and Martin as a driver getting foster kids to and from school. They’ve created a loving environment for Te Moana-Clayton now and their experience makes them worried for any youth offenders who, like their foster daughter, might be neurodiverse and suffering trauma.

Gythlian Loveday says she’s seen some young people she’s worked with do well on LSV but “they came from stable homes, a very different foundation to a lot of the kids out there who we think need a bit of strict harsh discipline”.

As a patron of the LSV programme, Guy Pope-Mayell knows it can work. But as the chair of the Dyslexia Foundation of New Zealand, he also knows how neurodiverse rangatahi will struggle. “Around about 80% of all young people that find themselves in front of the court have some form of neurodiversity. And the vast majority of those have dyslexia.”

He says it’s not their brains that put them on a pathway to prison, but “it’s the experience they’ve had during their education where they’ve disengaged and formed a limiting belief about themselves.” Bootcamps, he says, do the same thing, “when you put a young person involuntarily into a situation to force change what you are doing is replicating the experience they’ve had in the education system. And that’s a recipe for disaster.”

There is an alternative. The community organisations working with young offenders, either in their own programmes or as part of the Fast Track scheme which operates in tandem with police, Oranga Tamariki and iwi. They’re already having great success at reducing rates of reoffending.

With previous bootcamps, reoffending rates stayed high at 86 to 94%. Community organisations I spoke to have done better than that – with reoffending rates between 30 and 50%. Results are even better when working with the Fast Track programme where reoffending rates are only 20%.

We spoke to several community operators who would only say they’re desperate for funding to continue. They won’t say more as, like hundreds of other non-government organisations, their contracts with Oranga Tamariki are up in the air, although they may find out their status this week.

One organisation that was happy to speak to us was One Eighty Turn, based in South Auckland. It’s run by Petani Fa’avae and Saimone ‘Mone’ Latu. They’re both Tongan and work with Tongan kids. And like those kids, they both have a history of crime themselves.

They want to see every approach work, including bootcamps, but say that the really damaged young criminals are more likely to stop offending if they’re helped another way.

Fa’avae and Latu believe that in some of those cases, their own lived experiences – both cultural and criminal, can cut through where others can’t.

“You know a lot of teachers and people, they’re coming out of university with degrees and it's hard for us to relate to them so we sit at the back of the classroom, we don't pay attention to what they've got to say but when a gangster walks in the room, everyone’s listening, so we try to be what we wish we’d had,” Fa’avae explains.

He means positive role models. These two have turned their lives around. They’re repentant, they lean on their faith, and they’re determined to give back to the community.

They aim to work alongside troubled youth for a lifetime – not just a few months – providing mentoring, love, support and opportunities. Why? Because they feel that would have made a difference to them. “I don’t believe I was a bad kid, I was a product of that environment I put myself in, having that guidance at the right time would have been crucial,” says Fa’avae.

They’re having success with a serious offender who has ADHD, and who’s been guilty of ram raids and burglaries before the age of 16.

“Give us the baddest of the bad, and we’ll make them the best of the best.” says Latu.

They’re keeping him busy learning kick boxing, photography and lending a hand with film set design. And it’s working. He has stayed with the programme for more than five months, despite a history of running away from everything else.

Petani believes young offenders can change, but it’s about getting the right programme for the right person. “We believe every kid has a God-given talent. No-one is born useless, and finding what they’re good at, that’s what we’re doing”.

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