While district court judges face scrutiny over their conduct, there's a number buried in New Zealand's youth justice system that tells a more troubling story about what's actually happening in our courts.

In 2024, New Zealand youth courts handed down 1,467 adult sentences to young offenders. That's more than double — 111% higher — than the 694 adult sentences given in 2019, before COVID upended everything (Source: Ministry of Justice, youth-court-orders).

Adult sentences are the harshest tool in youth court. They're reserved for the most serious offending — cases where judges decide a young person needs to face consequences in the adult justice system. When we use them twice as often as we did five years ago, that's not just a statistical blip. That's a fundamental shift in how we're treating young offenders.

The trajectory is striking. In 2021, adult sentences dropped to 942 — possibly because COVID lockdowns kept kids out of trouble, or courts were backlogged, or both. But then they surged: 1,530 in 2022, 1,599 in 2023, before settling slightly to 1,467 last year.

What changed? We don't have a youth crime wave to match these numbers. Total youth offending hasn't doubled. But something in our system — whether it's police charging decisions, changes in what cases reach court, or judicial philosophy — is pushing more young people toward adult consequences.

This matters because adult sentences change lives permanently. They create criminal records that follow young people into employment, housing, and overseas travel. They're meant to be exceptional. Using them at twice the pre-COVID rate makes them routine.

The political conversation about courts focuses on individual judges and their behaviour. That's the drama that makes headlines. But the data suggests we should be asking bigger questions: Why are we treating more young offenders like adults? Are we making communities safer, or are we creating a generation with criminal records that will haunt them for decades?

The government just unveiled New Zealand's first national infrastructure plan. We build roads, we plan water systems. But the infrastructure of youth justice — the choices we make about who gets a second chance and who gets an adult conviction — deserves the same scrutiny.

Because right now, without much public debate, we've quietly doubled down on treating young people like hardened criminals. And the data suggests nobody's stopping to ask if it's working.