While the government announces move-on orders for homeless people in every town centre across New Zealand, there's another story about how we respond to people at the margins that nobody's watching: what Youth Courts are actually ordering for young offenders.

The answer? Education. A lot more of it.

In 2024, Youth Courts ordered 84 young offenders into education and rehabilitation programmes. That's a 75% surge from the year before, when just 48 received these orders. (Source: Stats NZ, youth-court-orders)

The trajectory is striking. Back in 2018, courts handed down 159 of these orders. Then the number collapsed to 48 and flatlined there for years, sitting at 48 in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Something changed in 2024.

These aren't supervision orders or community work. Education and rehab programmes are intensive interventions, usually involving structured learning, life skills training, or substance abuse treatment. They're expensive. They take time. And courts don't order them lightly.

So why the sudden jump? The data doesn't tell us, but the timing matters. This spike comes as public anxiety about youth crime reaches fever pitch, with politicians calling for tougher responses and faster consequences. Yet here's Youth Court, quietly doubling down on the slowest, most rehabilitative tool in the box.

Context: this isn't a return to 2018 levels. We're still well below that 159 figure. But after three years of stagnation at 48 orders annually, the system appears to be recalibrating. Either more young offenders are being deemed suitable for education programmes, or courts are choosing rehab over other penalties more often, or both.

The contrast with today's policy announcements is hard to ignore. Move-on orders are about displacement: moving visible problems out of sight. Education orders for young offenders are the opposite: intensive, long-term investment in changing behaviour at its root.

One approach costs almost nothing and solves nothing. The other costs significantly more and takes years to show results. New Zealand is doing both simultaneously, and the data suggests courts are leaning harder into the expensive, slow option than they have in half a decade.

Whether this 75% jump represents a genuine shift in Youth Court philosophy or a one-year anomaly, we won't know until 2025 data arrives. But for now, while politicians announce crackdowns and move-on powers, the Youth Court system is quietly sending more young offenders to school.