Venu Menon
Wellington, July 22,2024
The coalition government’s $5.1 million military-style academy pilot project, aimed at weaning youth away from a life of crime and the cycle of reoffending, will get underway when the first batch of young offenders is taken in later this month.
“On the 29th of July, 10 young people will begin their time on the Military-style Academy Pilot,” Minister for Children Karen Chhour announced while launching the Military-style Academy Pilot on July 20.
The pilot will run from a facility in Palmerston North.
In the first three months, the 14 to 17-year-old “recruits” will be put through a routine that involves a mix of physical activities, education and vocational training, among other components.
Minister Chhour said each young person will have “a consistent mentor” through the first nine months at the academy, after which the inmate will be supported to “transition back into the community.”
“Whanau will be engaged where possible for the full 12 months of the programme,” Chhour added.
Providing a pathway to education, employment and working with the families of the young people are the defining components of the programme that the government sees as differentiating it from past efforts of this nature.
The pilot is the result of the collaboration between Oranga Tamariki, the New Zealand Defence Force, the Ministry of Justice, New Zealand Police and other community groups.
Minister Chhour hopes the pilot will ensure young people “are held accountable for, and face up to, their actions.”
The Military-style Academy, or boot camp as it is popularly known, goes hand-in-hand with the new Young Serious Offender (YSO) category, an initiative aimed at ensuring young offenders face tougher consequences and are “better supported to turn their lives around.”
Young people with a YSO declaration go to a different Military-style Academy, invite stricter monitoring and face arrest for violating the terms of an order or breaching bail conditions.
A new law covering both military-style academies and the YSO category will need to be passed by Parliament before these become part of standard practice. The pilot programme operates under current law.
Youth at the facility will follow a curriculum and syllabus customised to suit their requirements.
Young people attract the YSO declaration if they are 14 to 17-years-old at the time of offending, and if they are convicted of two offences punishable by imprisonment of 10 years or more (such as aggravated robbery and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm).
The YSO category also applies to youth who are likely to reoffend after previous interventions have been unsuccessful. YSO declarations are issued by the Youth Court.
The move to launch the Military-style Academy Pilot comes after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon recently reaffirmed his faith in boot camps to curb youth reoffending.
It comes at a time when retail crime, particularly in Auckland, has been spiralling out of control, with a hammer attack on an Auckland store owner in June.
The government is mindful of striking the right balance between punishment and rehabilitation while implementing the pilot.
Luxon explains young offenders are “taken out of their community so that they don’t cause harm in the community,” with the aim of making “powerful, targeted interventions in these young people’s lives and giving them the very best start to turn their lives around.”
But not everyone is convinced.
The move to launch military-style academies and the new YSO category is facing push-back from Opposition parties and youth justice advocacy groups who see a punitive element in the government’s initiatives that will perpetuate the crime cycle.
With police numbers going up in Auckland City this month, and community patrols put in place in towns and cities across the country over the next two years, as well as Three Strikes (which targets repeat offenders) being reinstated, the coalition government looks set to unroll its law-and-order package of measures in the coming months.
But whether boot camps will meet the expectations of dairy and business owners’ associations, who have lobbied for harsher penalties for youth offenders, remains to be seen.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
