Reduce Youth Sentence Discounts — Capping repeat mitigating-factor reductions for young offenders

The Policy: National Law and Order Policy — 2023 Election →

During the 2023 election campaign, National promised to stop judges from stacking repeat discounts for youth and remorse when sentencing repeat offenders. The core argument: if a young person reoffends multiple times, courts should not keep applying the same youth-based discount as though it were fresh mitigation each time. Christopher Luxon put it bluntly — "we don't believe you can be remorseful 10 times." This formed part of a broader tough-on-crime package alongside a 40% overall cap on sentence discounts.

What it does:

• Prevents courts from applying repeat discounts for youth and remorse at sentencing — a judge can still consider youth as a mitigating factor, but cannot apply it multiple times for serial offenders (unless doing so is necessary to avoid a manifestly unjust outcome)
• Caps total sentence discounts for personal mitigating factors at 40% of the starting point, within which any youth reduction must sit
• Introduces a sliding scale for guilty-plea discounts: maximum 25% if entered at the earliest opportunity, dropping to as low as 5% if the plea is entered during trial
• Adds new aggravating factors, including offences against sole-charge workers and violence against under-18s (previously the threshold was under-14)
• Encourages cumulative rather than concurrent sentencing for crimes committed while on bail, on parole, or in custody

Where things stand:

The Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Act 2025 passed Parliament on 27 March 2025 and came into force on 29 June 2025 — a promise delivered in full within the government's first term. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith framed the change as restoring public confidence: "We had developed a culture of excuses," he said, arguing that repeat youth discounts had become near-automatic and undermined personal accountability.

The Ministry of Justice's own regulatory impact statement projected the reforms would add roughly 1,350 people to the prison population over time, at an estimated cost of $150 million over ten years. Critics seized on those numbers. Labour's Duncan Webb argued that "tough on crime sounds good but does not actually have the effect of reducing crime," warning the changes would clog courts and ultimately create more victims by failing to address root causes like poverty and mental health. The Greens contended that longer incarceration simply produces "better criminals," while Te Paati Māori raised concerns that the reforms would disproportionately affect Māori and rangatahi, who are already heavily over-represented in the justice system.

Legal experts and youth-justice advocates have been largely critical. The New Zealand Law Society submitted against the bill in October 2024, arguing that youth is a well-evidenced mitigating factor — developing brains, high capacity for rehabilitation — and that restricting judicial discretion risks harsher outcomes for the very cohort most likely to change. Whether the reform reduces reoffending or simply increases incarceration without reducing crime will take years of data to assess; the prison population is already projected to rise sharply over the next decade.

What to watch:

• Prison population figures over 2025–2027: whether the Ministry of Justice's projection of ~1,350 additional inmates materialises and what the fiscal cost is
• Reoffending and youth-crime rates: whether tougher sentencing deters offending or simply warehouses young people without rehabilitation
• Court workload and guilty-plea rates: whether the reduced discount incentive for late pleas affects how cases proceed through the system
• Any future review or amendment: Labour has signalled it would revisit sentencing policy if returned to government