Willow Jean Prime: Labour's Children's Spokesperson on bootcamp pilot programme for serious youth offenders starting today

Oranga Tamariki’s bootcamp pilot programme for serious youth offenders starts today. 

The 12-month military style programme will see one-to-one mentoring with a focus on routine, physical activity and education. 

Labour’s children’s spokesperson Willow Jean Prime tells Ryan Bridge the programme is experimental and is taking place despite evidence that bootcamp models do not work. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pamadegi's boot Camp pilot program for serious young offenders starts today.
The twelvemonth military style program will see one to one
mentoring for each teenager with a focus on routine physical
activity and education. Willow Jene Prime is Labour's Children's spokesperson
and joins me, now, thank you for being with me
this morning. First of all, this this sounds like quite

(00:23):
a good thing, particularly for those serious repeat young offenders.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
No, no, it doesn't sound like a good thing, Ryan,
and that is because what we have here is the
government running a pilot. Essentially, the pilot pilot is an experiment,
and that is despite evidence, experts and people with experience
all saying that military style academies or boot camps do

(00:51):
not work for these young people.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Karen Shaw says they have learned from past boot camps.
The focus this time will be more on rehabilitation and
re entering the community.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
They say that they have learned, yet they are ignoring evidence,
experts and people with experience who say that the scared
straight and boot camp style programs do not work. And
that was the most recent report on them by Sir
Peter Glickmann in twenty eighteen. And this just last week
we had the Royal Commission report on Abuse in Staycare

(01:26):
and it includes an entire chapter on boot camp and
in there many of the same issues are raised in
that report, and they continue to ignore that and insist
on their tough on crime, punitive rhetoric and approaches to
dealing with these young people.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Can you see why they might be wanting to try
new innovative things like pilots, given that, according to the
Ministry of Justice, there was a twenty six percent increase
in fourteen to sixteen year olds undergoing serious and persistent offending.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
The issue that we have here is that when the
government came in, they were prevent a briefing which showed
that the circuit break up program was having a seventy
six percent success rate. They have decided to cancel the
Enhanced fast Track program instead in favor of their boot
camp pilot, where there is ample evidence, decades of evidence,

(02:23):
recent evidence from nineteen eighty nine to two thousand and
four that boot camps do not work. Yet they insist
on experimenting once again with young people instead of acknowledging
and supporting those programs that do and can work.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
How would you rate Labour's performance in supporting young people
who might be at risk of offending. Given that four
thousand children were living in motels and there was a
two percent increase in material hardship child poverty figures under
your watch.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
These are extremely difficult challenge is that we all have
and that we have to face as a society. That
is what came out of the Royal Commission's report. Labour
invested significantly in the Circuit Breaker program, which evidence shows
was having a seventy six percent success rate in working
with our young serious offenders. We invested further into the

(03:21):
Enhanced Fast Track. I was so disappointed when this government
canceled that program in favor of failed experiments of the past,
the boot Camp.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Wellogen Prime, Labour's children's spokesperson, Thanks so much for more
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