Reducing child and youth offenses

In April 2024, the Prime Minister announced 9 government targets to improve lives and achieve better results in the public sector. To support these, delivery plans are in place. They identify key tasks for each and ensure a report on their progress every 3 months. 

Target 3 of the 9 targets is for ‘reduced child and young offending’.

Focus areas

The delivery plan for Target 3 contains three focus areas:

1. Strengthen system settings

This focus area gives government agencies new tools. The tools will help us respond strongly to serious and persistent child and youth offending. They are:

• a Young Serious Offender declaration
• military-style academies
• a response to children 10-13 with offending behaviour.
   

2. Improve operational performance

This area of focus is to target interventions to those who are offending. This is to put the right responses in place and improve youth justice and transition processes. It also involves:

• set up of an immediate operational response in priority regions
• expanding the Fast Track response to 14–17-year-olds
• increased youth justice residence capacity
• better youth justice processes.
   

3. Prevent offending

This area is focused on locally led solutions and approaches to prevent offending in four priority regions – Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Canterbury.

These will be supported by:

• community responses for children at risk
• a Gateway Service redesign for more responsive health, disability and education services.

The quarterly report provides an update of progress on each focus area every 3 months.

Progress is tracked against the delivery plan. It also includes key data measures related to the target.

Delivery plan

Quarterly reports

Read about all 9 government target and their latest report.