SAANZ Conference 2024

Chair: Charlotte Bruce Kells

Emily Beck
Critical Insights into Aotearoa Youth Justice Residences through Qualitative Interviews with Youth Residents and Staff

Though youth crime has more than halved in the past decade in Aotearoa (Ministry of Justice, 2024), community outcry over offenses like ‘ram raids’ has caused the government to enforce a more punitive approach to youth offending, promoting an increased use of youth justice residences (YJR) and the reopening of military-style boot camps. This heightened tough-on-crime approach disproportionately affects rangatahi Māori, who make up the majority of youth in custody (Francis & Vlaanderen, 2023). Despite this increased attention on youth offending, academic scholarship on Aotearoa YJR remains lacking. This is a presentation of master’s research that explores whether the ongoing piecemeal reform of YJR, geared towards restorative justice and cultural sensitivity, is a feasible solution to youth offending when situated within a western justice system, operating in a neocolonial context. This presentation reflects on seven semi-structured interviews with youth justice residents and staff members and describes the reflexive thematic analysis that was conducted. Critical race theory and counter-colonial criminology are used as framework to identify structural and systemic barriers that make YJR a not only ineffective, but harmful intervention for youth. This presentation closes with a discussion on how transformative justice can offer an alternative direction for youth justice reform.


Grace Gordon
Beyond bars and bootcamps: Reimagining safety in Aotearoa New Zealand

Carceral safety logic positions justice institutions as a primary source of safety, and this logic dominates internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent political change in Aotearoa New Zealand has seen government commitments to the introduction of wide-reaching anti-gang legislation, ineffective youth justice policies such as ‘bootcamps’, and amendments to sentencing legislation that would result in a burgeoning prison population, all in the name of ‘public safety’. Concerningly, the promotion of these punitive policies occurs in tandem with the systematic neglect of marginalised communities, what Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms ‘organized abandonment’. The trauma experienced by these communities, whose lives are marked by precarity and oppression, is then weaponised against them through criminalisation and carceral safety logic. Using the case studies of the Waikeria prison expansion and the ‘Military Style Academy Pilot’ for youth, this paper problematises Aotearoa New Zealand’s reliance on carceral safety logic and argues that this logic perpetuates harm, particularly among already marginalised communities. It promotes early developments of a reimagining of safety through sustainable, care-based approaches that provide an overdue antidote to harm and violence in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Carceral safety logic positions justice institutions as a primary source of safety, and this logic dominates internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Recent political change in Aotearoa New Zealand has seen government commitments to the introduction of wide-reaching anti-gang legislation, ineffective youth justice policies such as ‘bootcamps’, and amendments to sentencing legislation that would result in a burgeoning prison population, all in the name of ‘public safety’. Concerningly, the promotion of these punitive policies occurs in tandem with the systematic neglect of marginalised communities, what Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms ‘organized abandonment’. The trauma experienced by these communities, whose lives are marked by precarity and oppression, is then weaponised against them through criminalisation and carceral safety logic. Using the case studies of the Waikeria prison expansion and the ‘Military Style Academy Pilot’ for youth, this paper problematises Aotearoa New Zealand’s reliance on carceral safety logic and argues that this logic perpetuates harm, particularly among already marginalised communities. It promotes early developments of a reimagining of safety through sustainable, care-based approaches that provide an overdue antidote to harm and violence in Aotearoa New Zealand.


Claudia Murdoch
Restorative practice in New Zealand schools: The challenges and successes.

This presentation outlines the findings of a Master of Arts in Criminology project on the challenges and successes of restorative practice in New Zealand schools. The work is situated within a political context of rising tough-on-crime rhetoric and zero-tolerance responses to young people’s misbehaviour. Restorative practice, by contrast, prioritises the mana, accountability, emotional capacity and harm-repair capability of the young people who experience it. As a result, it is a mechanism for decreasing exclusionary punishment use. The current literature suggests that the reduced rates of suspensions, stand-downs, exclusions and expulsions that result from effective restorative practice are important in disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.

This project aims to increase understanding of the factors preventing or enabling effective restorative practice. 11 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with teachers, school counsellors and restorative practice experts investigated their experiences enacting restorative practice in both a proactive and reactive capacity. It asked them about their experiences working with young people and the issues and opportunities they face within their schools. These issues and opportunities will be analysed in the presentation, alongside their implications on alternatives to punishment in the criminal justice system more broadly.