While the justice system worries about AI and deepfakes becoming problematic for courts, a different story is unfolding in youth justice data: the courts are ordering young offenders into education and rehabilitation programmes at rates not seen in years.

In 2024, judges ordered 84 young people into education and rehab programmes. That's a 75% surge from the 48 orders made in each of the three years prior. (Source: Ministry of Justice, youth-court-orders)

This isn't just a blip. It's a deliberate return to a model New Zealand tried before. Back in 2018, courts made 159 such orders. Then something changed. For three consecutive years, 2019 through 2021, that number flatlined at exactly 48 orders per year. It stayed frozen there through COVID, through lockdowns, through all the chaos in youth justice headlines.

Now it's climbing again. Not quite back to 2018 levels, but heading that direction.

What changed? The data doesn't tell us why judges suddenly started writing more rehabilitation orders, but the timing matters. This surge comes as public anxiety about youth crime reaches fever pitch. Politicians call for crackdowns. Headlines scream about ram raids and retail crime. But quietly, in courtrooms across New Zealand, judges are choosing a different path.

Education and rehab orders aren't soft options. They require young offenders to complete structured programmes addressing the reasons they ended up in court: substance abuse, anger management, literacy gaps, whatever drove them there. They're time-intensive. They cost money. But they aim to stop the cycle before it hardens.

The alternative is what we've always done: punishment without intervention. Consequences without solutions. And we know where that leads, because we've got decades of data showing young offenders cycling back through the system.

This shift matters because it suggests someone in the system learned something from 2018. That year, with 159 orders, courts were leaning heavily on rehabilitation. Then funding changed, priorities shifted, or perhaps COVID scrambled everything. The number collapsed to 48 and stayed there.

Now, as youth crime dominates political debate, the courts are quietly rebuilding that infrastructure. They're sending 75% more young people into programmes designed to stop reoffending, not just punish it.

It's worth watching whether this trend continues. Whether 84 orders becomes 100, then 120, climbing back toward those 2018 levels. Whether the system commits to this approach or whether, like before, the numbers suddenly freeze again.

Because right now, while politicians argue about boot camps and consequences, judges are making a different bet: that some young offenders need teaching more than they need punishing.