Explainer | The Return of Boot Camps: Background to MSAs

Written by Riley Parnwell

Youth boot camps are returning to our criminal justice system. Following policy development and a pilot programme, the ‘Military-Style Academies’ will be officially rolled out upon enactment of the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill. This is the first of two articles which explain and analyse the reintroduction of boot camps. This article covers the context behind Military-Style Academies at the political and public policy levels. It then discusses the bill that will provide the statutory foundation, as well as the evidence the Government appears to have disregarded. My next article breaks the pilot programme into its various components, setting out what can be expected day-to-day for the young people involved.

Policy Context

The National Party campaigned on Military-Style Academies (MSAs) during the 2023 election, as part of the package they say will restore “law and order” (New Zealand National Party, 2023). This may have been a response to commentary on offending by young people being particularly prominent in recent years. MSAs are being introduced, however, at a time where this offending is decreasing. Ram raids are down significantly, and serious offending by young people is hovering at a decrease of 12 per cent from 2023 baselines (Sharma, 2025; and Oranga Tamariki, 2025(a), p. 3). No other significant youth justice policy has been implemented, meaning environmental factors alone appear to have placed the Government close to its target of a 15 per cent reduction in serious youth offending.

The Incoming Statutory Scheme

The Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 is being amended to provide the legal basis for the boot camps, by way of the Oranga Tamariki (Responding to Serious Youth Offending) Amendment Bill. Putting aside the various technical changes the bill will make to the youth justice system, it has two main pillars: the Young Serious Offender declaration and the MSA order. 

The Young Serious Offender (YSO) declaration will serve as a key to unlocking greater powers for Oranga Tamariki and Police, letting them respond to offending by young people and keep them in custody. To be subject to a declaration, a young person must have been convicted of at least one ‘specified offence’ and be awaiting the response of the Youth Court to another ‘specified offence’. These are defined in the bill as crimes punishable by 10 or more years imprisonment, committed between the ages of 14 and 18. 

In effect, this restricts the base of young people who could be sent to MSAs to those who have committed two or more serious property or violence offences like burglary, robbery and assault with intent to rob, as Oranga Tamariki chose not to include young people who sexually offended in the pilot programme (Malatest International, 2024). Only prosecutors can apply for YSO declarations and can do so up to 10 working days after a qualifying offence is proven. 

Once the Youth Court declares a young person to be the subject of a declaration, it must apply stricter sentencing considerations, curfew conditions may be intensified (including through electronic monitoring), supervision orders become longer, early release is no longer available, and Police unlock the power to detain a young person and arrest them without a warrant for failure to comply with conditions. The most powerful tool a declaration unlocks, however, is the MSA order.

The second pillar of the bill, MSA orders, will function as a new avenue of maximum severity. The Youth Court can use these orders when sentencing, or ‘responding to’, a qualifying specified offence. Under proposed section 320S, only those who have committed a qualifying offence between 15 and 18 can be sent to a boot camp, and they can last for three to 12 months. An MSA order must be followed by a supervision order of at least six months, but proposed section 320X caps the overall duration at 24 months. While MSAs must be held within existing youth justice residences, any component can be delivered by non-government providers and Oranga Tamariki officials, as well as approved staff of non-government providers will have authority to use force against young people in certain situations (per proposed section 320W).

Experimental Evidence on Youth Boot Camps

The bill has significant ambitions for MSAs. It explains they will have two components: military-style activities and daily activities. Per proposed section 320S(5), all activities are to further the “health, learning, and well-being” of the young people. The definition makes no reference to punishment, doing away with the traditional image of a boot camp. It implies MSAs will be supportive facilities where young people can develop themselves in several facets and learn how to reintegrate into society. But these ambitions sit in stark contrast to the experimental evidence on boot camps.

A leading study by Farrington, Gaffney and White (2022) analysed the “most important systematic review” (p. 47) across 12 categories of intervention designed to lower offending by young people. They selected a paper from Wilson, MacKenzie and Mitchell (2005) as the best review of boot camps. That paper itself looked at 32 evaluations of boot camp programmes. It found youth boot camps had an effect size of 0.94, which translates to a three to five per cent increase in recidivism (Wilson et al., 2005). Statistically, boot camps therefore increase criminality. While Wilson et al. (2005) did find some boot camps with a “primary focus on therapeutic programming” (p. 19) reduced recidivism, their finding was not “statistically significant” (p. 19) for the entire sample. Any positive effect was essentially luck, explained only by circumstantial variation between the experiments.

The Minister was presented evidence of the ineffectiveness of boot camps. In fact, the Farrington paper was cited in the bill’s Regulatory Impact Statement, although it was summarised as showing MSAs are “one of the least effective interventions” (2024, p. 12). While this wording does not quite match what the Farrington paper found, New Zealand has its own anecdotal evidence on boot camps, which was also put to the Minister. 

Te Whakapakari was the first boot camp in New Zealand. Run on Great Barrier Island, it was for some time the only nationwide programme Youth Court judges could send young people to. A case study from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care sets out the mistreatment that defined Te Whakapakari. There were mock executions, the young people suffered horrific sexual offending by staff, and in several instances, they were left on a smaller island without food or water (Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, 2024, pp. 19 and 39). Although it was not run by the Government, it was funded by several agencies over a number of decades and continued to be funded despite allegations of abuse. Funding was only pulled in 2003, on the basis that boot camps do not work (Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, 2024, p. 96).

The military activity camps of the 2010s were supposed to be different, with less of a militaristic focus than Te Whakapakari. Run under the previous National-led government, then-Minister Paula Bennett described them as “fundamentally different from past models” (Bennett, 2009). They happen to be similar in function to MSAs, featuring a stint in a youth justice residence followed by a mandatory period of supervision. Regrettably, they failed too. When compared to those on supervision with residence orders, there was no change in reoffending. More than half of participants “reoffended within 12 months” (Oranga Tamariki, 2025(b), at [41]). 

Conclusion

Both experimental evidence from overseas and anecdotal evidence from New Zealand’s history indicate that MSAs will not work. It appears the prospect of the bill’s rehabilitative language coming to fruition is incredibly small, let alone the chance of MSAs reducing reoffending. Provisions like the use of force will create further concern. I explain how this conclusion is validated in my next article, ‘The (In)Efficacy of Military-Style Academies’, but the big question remains: if they are statistically doomed to fail, why are MSAs being introduced?

References

Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry. (2024). Boot Camp: Te Whakapakari Youth Programme. https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/23502/case-study-whakapakari.pdf.

Daniels, C. (2023, October 9). Election 2023: A political history of boot camps; National and Labour’s approach to ‘corrective training’. New Zealand Herald. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/a-history-of-bootcamps/4R5Z2UD6CVDXPJ53RZZ65OKB64/.

Farrington, D., Gaffney, H., & White, H. (2022). Effectiveness of 12 Types of Interventions in Reducing Juvenile Offending and Antisocial Behaviour. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 64(4), 47-68. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2022-0022.

Malatest International. (2024). Evaluation of the Military-Style Academy pilot: Assessment and residential phases. https://www.orangatamariki.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Youth-justice/Military-Style-Academies/Reports-and-Briefings/OT-MSA-residence-stage-preliminary-evaluation.pdf.

New Zealand National Party. (2023). Restoring law and order. https://assets.national.org.nz/web/prod/Plan_Restoring_Law_and_Order.pdf?v=1728002531.

Oranga Tamariki. (2025(a)). Performance Measures for Ministerial Priorities: Quarter Three 2024/25. https://www.orangatamariki.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/About-us/Performance-and-monitoring/Ministerial-priorities/Ministerial-Priorities-Report-Q3-2024-25.pdf.

Oranga Tamariki. (2025(b)). Regulatory Impact Statement: Young serious offender declaration and military-style academies. https://www.orangatamariki.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Youth-justice/Military-Style-Academies/Regulatory-Impact-Statement-Serious-Youth-Offenders-and-military-style-academies-June-2024.pdf.  

Paula, B. (2009). ‘Boot camp’ critics miss the point. Beehive. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/%E2%80%9Cboot-camp%E2%80%9D-critics-miss-point.

Sharma, G. (2025, February 21). Ram raids decline almost 60 percent year on year. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/indonz/542587/ram-raids-decline-almost-60-percent-year-on-year.

Wilson, D., MacKenzie, D., & Mitchell, F. (2005). Effects of correctional boot camps on offending. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 1(1), 1-45. https://doi.org/10.4073/csr.2005.6.