THE NEW ZEALAND government has announced plans to crack down on the country’s worst juvenile offenders.

If re-elected in the upcoming general election, the National Party has said it will send the country’s most serious young offenders to train alongside soldiers for a year at a bootcamp run by the army.

The Guardian reports that “negligent parents” will also be fined NZ$200 (about €125) if their children aged 14 or under are found on the streets unsupervised between midnight and 5am.

National Party justice spokesperson Amy Adams said there are about 150 young people in New Zealand who “continue to commit large numbers of serious offences”. She added that any children who fail to complete the training programme would serve a “commensurate adult sentence of imprisonment instead”.

Critics of the centre-right party’s plan have labelled it excessive.

What do you think: Should the worst young offenders be sent to an army bootcamp?