Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says there are some "areas for us to work on" with the boot camp plans. Photo: RNZ/ Nate McKinnon
The prime minister is not aware how many boot camp pilot participants are back in custody, and refuses to confirm the rate of reoffending within the programme.
Christopher Luxon said he does not know the detail and is not going to get into individual cases to "respect people's privacy".
He acknowledged that there would be "some reoffending", but the bottom line was there were some positives coming out of the report, and some "areas for us to work on".
The first official evaluation of the trial military academy was released on Friday, and Oranga Tamariki confirmed "alleged reoffending" has occurred.
Luxon faced sustained questioning about the issue at the post-cabinet media conference, given the coalition had been warned that previous attempts at boot camp style programmes had not worked and the Prime Minister had earlier stated they were trying something "different".
The coalition had also publicly celebrated individual achievements earlier in the programme.
"When I know we have one young man that is in work. When I know we have another young man that's about to start work. When I know we've got six young men that are back in education - yes, I do think that it is a positive," said Minister for Karen Chourr in select committee in December.
Following the death of one participant in a car accident - and another escaping from custody, who then went on to allegedly reoffend alongside a third participant - Oranga Tamariki announced they would only provide public updates "at appropriate times through the community stage."
Just last week, the minister was questioned by Labour's spokesperson for children Willow-Jean Prime, asking if it was true that eight of the 10 pilot military style academy participants had allegedly reoffended, and that six were "apparently back in youth justice facilities."
Chourr would not "confirm or deny" the numbers, because "I am not going to constantly drag these young people down".
When asked what had changed since the Minister and Oranga Tamariki had responded to individual cases, Luxon said it would be inappropriate as prime minister to talk about individual circumstances.
"It was a small cohort of kids, and I want to make sure that they are protected."
Asked multiple times for the rate of reoffending - rather than individual cases - Luxon told reporters he was not "going into individual cases".
When asked if the public will ever know the rate, Luxon said: "We're going to continue to work at it, but I'm not going to talk to you about individual cases."
Luxon indicated the pilot was a pilot for a reason.
"What can we learn from it? What works well, what doesn't work well? I'm sure there's lots for us to digest as we improve the programme.
"We got a lot of good feedback on some aspects of it. There'll be areas to improve on it, particularly as we shape the piece of legislation that we've got coming through the house."
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said bootcamps were a "failure".
"Bootcamps are an absolute failure, the government was told they were going to be a failure. Now that the evidence exists to show that they're a failure, they're trying to cover that up."
Hipkins said the government should be transparent, and he will look at all available avenues to get more information, including the Ombdusman and potentially the Auditor-General.
"There's no good reason for withholding it, the government released information about participants in the boot camp before when they thought it was going to be something that was going to be good news for them. Now they're trying to cover it up now it's bad news."
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