NZ ACT Party Defends Plan to Put Ankle Bracelets on Offenders as Young as 11

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New Zealand’s ACT Party has stood by its plan to use tracking ankle bracelets on youth offenders as young as 11 years old in response to escalating youth crime.

In response to the Ardern government’s “Better Pathways” package announcement on Sept 6., ACT Leader David Seymour said the plan would fail because it lacked the inclusion of “a single consequence for youth offenders.”

“Today, we’re proposing ankle bracelets for youth offenders who carry out serious offences,” Seymour said on Sept. 6.

“Ram raids are being carried out by the same, hardened group of young people who face no consequences. They’re too young for prison, they’re known to escape from youth justice facilities, or are sent home to their families where they have a lack of guidance and discipline.”

National Party Leader Christopher Luxon refused to support the idea but did agree that the package did nothing to address serious offending.

But Seymour encouraged the National party to reconsider support for the plan or propose consequences of their own.

“What I find with National is they keep talking about consequences for youth offenders,” he told the AM show. If they propose any consequences of their own, we’ll actually look very carefully and try to support them because we want to work with them.

He argued that while some people may say putting a bracelet on an 11-year-old may be jarring or harsh, the fact was these same children were going around stealing cars and driving them into a small business to steal, also known as ram-raiding.

“Yes, these kids may be wayward, and they may be victims themselves in some in some senses, but they’re also capable of making a decision,” Seymour said. “And they need to see consequences for the decisions they’ve made.”

Ram-raiding is primarily carried out by young people and has increased by 518 percent in New Zealand over the first half of 2022. Most ram-raid offences occur in Waikato, the Auckland region.

Police Minister Chris Hipkins told parliament that from May to July, 129 ram raids occurred nationally.

He added that in the city of Auckland, between April 1 and Aug. 6, there were 84 ram raids. Almost all 38 identified or arrested offenders were under the age of 18, with a median age of 15.

Darroch Ball, former MP and the leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust said electronic monitoring with ankle bracelets was “simply monitoring,” not an actual consequence for young people.

“The big question that no one yet has asked, is if they are under electronic monitoring then commit another crime, then what?” he wrote in a post of Facebook.