Oranga Rangatahi programme's success tackling youth crime
Published: July 16, 2026
Youth Justice Manager Sam Burroughs talks about how the programme has succeeded in lowering youth crime.
About the programme
The Oranga Rangatahi programmes are preventative youth justice programmes supported by iwi, Police, and local schools. They’re aimed at 11-14 year olds that have come to the attention of Police and left mainstream education at intermediate school, or earlier.
Youth justice manager sees drop in youth crime
When Youth Justice Manager Sam Burroughs was given the opportunity to cover the role that ran the Oranga Rangatahi programmes, he jumped at the opportunity.
Burroughs acted in the role for about 18 months before taking it on permanently and said almost 2 years since then the programme has gone from strength to strength. He said:
“Huntly was the first programme and started in 2018. That pilot went really well. They had a 75% drop in youth crime in a year.
All the staff are Oranga Tamariki staff and in most of our locations we are housed in and work alongside community providers.”
Oranga Rangatahi expands across the country
There are now 7 programmes run across the central North Island in Levin, Huntly, Hastings, Napier, Wairoa, Ōpōtiki and Gisborne. Gisborne is the newest programme, starting at the end of 2025.
Each area can set their own unique programming, which means they can tailor the programme to fit what the young people need at that time. It’s all unique to the areas and relationships.
We don’t want to go in prescriptive. Decisions made at a national level and rolled out across the country don’t always work in all areas, especially small places.
Sam Burroughs , Youth Justice Manager
Small groups, unique programmes
Burroughs continues:
"Most of these are in small places. The programme in Hastings is in Flaxmere, where we get all our referrals. The programmes are different in each place, and they might run different things for different kids across the year too.
Huntly had 7 girls a few years ago, which is rare, so we ran a programme specific to girls, highlighting different issues such as self-esteem, confidence, and online bullying.
We change it as we see fit, some kids aren’t good in groups, so we do it one-on-one, it just depends.
Although we can work with older age ranges, it’s mostly younger kids, aged 11-14 who have had some offending behaviour or are at risk of it, younger siblings of rangatahi who are in the youth justice space, and very few offend while on the programme.
Gisborne is a recent programme set up through staff flagging there was a need in the area.
I went to Gisborne and met with a local provider and the Police and they were very enthusiastic. We have had about 10 referrals there and one of them, it was our very first referral, the staff were able to get that rangatahi back into mainstream schooling in the first term this year.”
Outcomes showing success
The ability to tailor the programmes to what works best for the area, is showing great success. The leadership team get a lot of emails highlighting success stories from different areas. Boroughs said:
“In the Waikato region we have had 2 young people obtain their learner driver licence, with one exploring full-time employment opportunities and the other having their confidence just grow immensely from the experience.
We had 1 young person exit the programme after doing tremendously well, and the following year they were selected for a leadership position at their high school.
Another young person in the Waikato region managed to transition back to mainstream school this year, already engaging in sports teams they offer.”
From the start of the different programs until the end of June 2025, they had a total of 260 referrals. Around 17% of young people offended while on the programmes.
The future
Looking ahead, there are hopes of expanding the Oranga Rangatahi programme to further locations around the country and possibly the South Island. Boroughs said:
“There has been talk about setting another programme in the Waikato and several areas in the South Island have been flagged where there could be potential benefits from a similar programme.
It is very cost effective to run, it’s about 3 staff and a provider we can partner with, sometimes we will go and work from their site so we don’t need to find space at our existing site or pay any additional rents, we can provide a van to be used and that’s about all I need to start a programme.”