Get Action! Say NO to Youth Offender Boot Camps w Clara Donne: 5 June, 2024

One of the coalition government’s promises during the general election was to introduce Military-style boot camps for young offenders, as part of their purported commitment to crack down on crime in Aotearoa. 

So far, the government seems to be on track to upholding this promise, and announced earlier in March that the first Youth-Offender boot camps would be set up around this time of the year. 

However, a number of critics have come forward in opposition to the government’s plans for youth-offender bootcamps, claiming that when they were first implemented in 2009 under the John Key government, they failed to improve outcomes and reduce recidivism for troubled youth.

For this week’s Get Action! Oto spoke to Clara Donne, President of the Criminological Society at Otago University, who’s started a petition calling for the government to roll back it’s plans to re-establish Youth Offender Camps.