Safe Homes, Not Boot Camps: Why Real Justice Begins With Housing
In Aotearoa New Zealand, youth justice policy is often dominated by sensational headlines, alarmist rhetoric, and calls for punitive crackdowns. Yet a recent study from Otago University cuts through the noise and offers a radically simple insight: when young people have access to safe, stable housing, they are far less likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system. This finding, though unsurprising to anyone who understands the roots of social harm, exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of government approaches to both crime and housing.
The study analysed national-level data across multiple housing interventions and justice outcomes. It found that youth living in emergency housing, such as motels or shelters, saw no significant reduction in offending. But those placed in public housing—secure, long-term homes—were significantly less likely to be charged with offences over time. Three years after entering public housing, youth offending dropped by 11.7%, and court charges by 10.9%. Similarly, those receiving the Accommodation Supplement saw an 8.6% reduction in charges and a 13% drop in alleged offending.
In short: if you want to stop crime, give people homes. If you want to build a safer society, invest in community wellbeing, not punishment.
Housing Deprivation Is Structural Violence
What the state likes to call 'youth offending' is often nothing more than the logical result of poverty, dislocation, and systemic neglect. It is not a coincidence that Māori and Pasifika youth, those most systematically excluded from stable housing, are overrepresented in our youth justice system. It is not a coincidence that areas with underfunded public infrastructure, precarious employment, and unaffordable housing are also the areas with higher rates of criminalisation.
The dominant narrative, however, frames these young people as the problem – unruly, disrespectful, in need of discipline. From this position, the solution can only be control: boot camps, ankle bracelets, curfews, youth prisons. But this narrative is not only wrong, it is actively harmful. It diverts attention away from the social and economic structures that create conditions of desperation in the first place.
Dr Chang Yu, lead author of the study, put it bluntly: 'Cutting public housing supply threatens to reverse the progress achieved.' And yet this is precisely what the current government is doing. While touting a tough-on-crime stance, it is simultaneously slashing funding to Kāinga Ora, gutting public housing development, and restricting access to emergency accommodation. The contradiction is glaring – the same politicians who say they want to stop youth crime are dismantling the very social systems that keep young people out of the courts.
Crime Is a Failure of Capitalism, Not Morality
From an anarcho-communist perspective, this contradiction is no accident, it is a feature of the system. Capitalism produces inequality, and then punishes the poor for the conditions it has created. Housing, under capitalism, is not treated as a human right, but as a commodity to be bought, sold, speculated on, and hoarded for profit. Landlords profit from scarcity; property developers are incentivised to keep housing expensive; banks encourage debt servitude in the form of thirty-year mortgages.
In this environment, public housing becomes a threat. It challenges the idea that homes must be earned through market competition. It represents a form of collectivised provision, however flawed or bureaucratic, that sits uneasily alongside neoliberal dogma. That is why public housing is constantly under attack: not because it is ineffective, but because it works. Because it represents a crack in the logic of capitalist accumulation.
If we follow the logic of the Otago study to its conclusion, we are left with a radical proposition – crime prevention doesn't begin with more police, more prisons, or more punishment. It begins with material conditions. It begins with food, housing, education, and care. In other words, it begins with communism, not in the abstract, but in the everyday sense of shared resources, mutual support, and collective flourishing.
The Punitive State Is a Dead End
Despite the clear evidence, the state doubles down on carceral logic. In the past year alone, the government has reintroduced the 'Three Strikes' legislation, launched a Ram Raid Bill targeting youth with harsher sentences, and announced plans for military-style youth academies – boot camps in all but name.
These moves are not only ineffective; they are actively counterproductive. Boot camps do not reduce reoffending. What they do is isolate, traumatise, and entrench state power over the most marginalised. What they do is funnel youth into a pipeline of surveillance, punishment, and lifelong exclusion. All under the pretence of 'restoring discipline.'
But discipline is not what young people need. They need stability. They need to know where they're sleeping next week. They need food in the fridge, books in their bag, parents who aren't being evicted or working three jobs just to cover the rent. They need a system that sees them as people, not problems to be fixed, or threats to be neutralised.
Imagining Housing as a Commons
If we are serious about building a future free from cycles of harm, we must go far beyond tinkering at the edges of state policy. We must decommodify housing entirely. Homes should not be sources of profit—they should be embedded in community control, operated through co-operatives, trusts, and iwi-led organisations accountable to those who live there.
This is not utopian. Across the world, examples exist – tenant-run housing collectives, land trusts that resist gentrification, squats transformed into thriving community centres. In Aotearoa, these ideas are not new, they align with traditions of papakāinga, of whānau-based living, of collectivised land use long suppressed by colonial and capitalist interests.
Imagine a housing system where land was not sold to developers but returned to hapū and iwi. Where tenants had real decision-making power over their homes and neighbourhoods. Where housing was integrated with education, health, gardens, and community care. Where 'crime prevention' meant supporting people before the crisis hits, not punishing them after the fact.
This is the foundation of a non-carceral, post-capitalist society. A society rooted in tino rangatiratanga and class solidarity. A society that puts relationships before profit, and justice before punishment.
Organising for Real Change
To reach this future, we must organise. Tenants must unionise. Public housing residents must demand accountability and democratic governance. Land occupations, squats, and mutual aid projects must be supported, defended, and multiplied. We must call out the government's lies when they slash housing budgets while claiming to protect the public.
We must push for a politics that links housing with prison abolition, colonial reparations, and ecological justice. Because these struggles are not separate, they are part of the same terrain.
We are told that justice looks like punishment. But justice, real justice, looks like housing. It looks like the absence of handcuffs, and the presence of home-cooked meals. It looks like young people painting murals, not waiting for court dates. It looks like warm, dry bedrooms, not boot camps. And if we want that world, we will have to build it together.
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In Aotearoa New Zealand, youth justice policy is often dominated by sensational headlines, alarmist rhetoric, and calls for punitive crackdowns. Yet a recent study from Otago University cuts through the noise and offers a radically simple insight: when young people have access to safe, stable housing, they are far less likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system. This finding, though unsurprising to anyone who understands the roots of social harm, exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of government approaches to both crime and housing. The study analysed national-level data across multiple housing interventions and justice outcomes. It found that youth living in emergency housing, such as motels or shelters, saw no significant reduction in offending. But those placed in public housing—secure, long-term homes—were significantly less likely to be charged with offences over time. 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The dominant narrative, however, frames these young people as the problem – unruly, disrespectful, in need of discipline. From this position, the solution can only be control: boot camps, ankle bracelets, curfews, youth prisons. But this narrative is not only wrong, it is actively harmful. It diverts attention away from the social and economic structures that create conditions of desperation in the first place. Dr Chang Yu, lead author of the study, put it bluntly: 'Cutting public housing supply threatens to reverse the progress achieved.' And yet this is precisely what the current government is doing. While touting a tough-on-crime stance, it is simultaneously slashing funding to Kāinga Ora, gutting public housing development, and restricting access to emergency accommodation. The contradiction is glaring – the same politicians who say they want to stop youth crime are dismantling the very social systems that keep young people out of the courts. Crime Is a Failure of Capitalism, Not Morality From an anarcho-communist perspective, this contradiction is no accident, it is a feature of the system. Capitalism produces inequality, and then punishes the poor for the conditions it has created. Housing, under capitalism, is not treated as a human right, but as a commodity to be bought, sold, speculated on, and hoarded for profit. Landlords profit from scarcity; property developers are incentivised to keep housing expensive; banks encourage debt servitude in the form of thirty-year mortgages. In this environment, public housing becomes a threat. It challenges the idea that homes must be earned through market competition. It represents a form of collectivised provision, however flawed or bureaucratic, that sits uneasily alongside neoliberal dogma. That is why public housing is constantly under attack: not because it is ineffective, but because it works. Because it represents a crack in the logic of capitalist accumulation. If we follow the logic of the Otago study to its conclusion, we are left with a radical proposition – crime prevention doesn't begin with more police, more prisons, or more punishment. It begins with material conditions. It begins with food, housing, education, and care. In other words, it begins with communism, not in the abstract, but in the everyday sense of shared resources, mutual support, and collective flourishing. The Punitive State Is a Dead End Despite the clear evidence, the state doubles down on carceral logic. In the past year alone, the government has reintroduced the 'Three Strikes' legislation, launched a Ram Raid Bill targeting youth with harsher sentences, and announced plans for military-style youth academies – boot camps in all but name. These moves are not only ineffective; they are actively counterproductive. Boot camps do not reduce reoffending. What they do is isolate, traumatise, and entrench state power over the most marginalised. 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Across the world, examples exist – tenant-run housing collectives, land trusts that resist gentrification, squats transformed into thriving community centres. In Aotearoa, these ideas are not new, they align with traditions of papakāinga, of whānau-based living, of collectivised land use long suppressed by colonial and capitalist interests. Imagine a housing system where land was not sold to developers but returned to hapū and iwi. Where tenants had real decision-making power over their homes and neighbourhoods. Where housing was integrated with education, health, gardens, and community care. Where 'crime prevention' meant supporting people before the crisis hits, not punishing them after the fact. This is the foundation of a non-carceral, post-capitalist society. A society rooted in tino rangatiratanga and class solidarity. A society that puts relationships before profit, and justice before punishment. Organising for Real Change To reach this future, we must organise. Tenants must unionise. Public housing residents must demand accountability and democratic governance. Land occupations, squats, and mutual aid projects must be supported, defended, and multiplied. We must call out the government's lies when they slash housing budgets while claiming to protect the public. We must push for a politics that links housing with prison abolition, colonial reparations, and ecological justice. Because these struggles are not separate, they are part of the same terrain. We are told that justice looks like punishment. But justice, real justice, looks like housing. It looks like the absence of handcuffs, and the presence of home-cooked meals. It looks like young people painting murals, not waiting for court dates. It looks like warm, dry bedrooms, not boot camps. And if we want that world, we will have to build it together.
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