National Party MPs have stuck to a policy of ankle-banding repeat offenders as young as 10 and sending teens to a military academy in an effort to stop repeated ram raids, despite evidence that previous boot camp programs didn’t work.
The plans, Leader Christopher Luxon announced this on Thursday in Hamiltonsparked strong criticism from acting Prime Minister Grant Robertson, Justice Minister Kiri Allan and Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, who labeled them “racist” and “dehumanizing”.
The plans also contradict comments Luxon and its education spokeswoman Erica Stanford made when ACT said it would put 11-year-old offenders in anklets. Luxon told in September News hub he “wouldn’t support that,” with Stanford putting forward the idea last month “breaks her heart”.
Stanford said Thursday that electronic surveillance was “a small part of a larger policy” and that the government is already putting youth into ankle bracelets, a likely reference to the electronic surveillance of serious juvenile offenders awaiting trial in homes as young as 12 years old .
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Samuel Rillstone/RNZ
National’s education spokeswoman Erica Stanford has expressed differing views on electronic bracelets for juvenile offenders. (File photo)
However, Robertson said the plans are “reheating Bill English’s leftovers”.
Sir Bill in 2017 promised to create a new boot camp for juvenile delinquents on the Waiouru Army base to crack down on 150 of the country’s most serious young offenders, but Sir John Key first promised boot camps in his 2008 state of the nation speech before his election.
Robertson said National was creating a populist response to a serious problem, while ram raids also declined nationally.
“This is a National Party without ideas,” he said. “This is a policy that we know doesn’t work.”
Allan said a government policy of putting ankle bracelets on 10-year-olds “absolutely doesn’t exist,” while putting juvenile offenders in a boot camp would only increase victims in the long run.
“There’s no better way to get fitter, faster, stronger, better, better connected criminals than to throw them all into a military camp together to eventually become a fully-fledged national network,” she said.
National deputy leader Nicola Willis said the evidence behind the new policy was “that when a young person is locked up in an institution, he cannot reoffend”.
“The whole point of these facilities, which are brand new, is that we combine the best of the military with the best of those community providers who understand mentoring, who understand what it takes to get a kid back on track,” she said.
Davidson said the policy was “classic and racist”. “She [National] protect their own communities and stigmatize brown, poor, low-income communities.”