Wellington, May 22 NZPA - While politicians, lawyers and social workers battle about sending youth offenders to military style boot camps, new statistics show child and youth offending has decreased.

A Ministry of Justice report shows child (aged 10-13) and youth (aged 14-16) apprehension rates in 2006 and 2007 were the lowest since 1995, though violent offending rates increased.

The rates are based on the number of alleged offences, not the number of individuals as one person might be accused of multiple crimes.

Property offences, which have the largest proportion of apprehensions, dropped from 79.3 percent in 1995 to 69.6 percent (children), and from 68.2 percent to 60.2 percent (youths).

But while overall offending decreased, violent apprehensions rose.

The rate of youth violent apprehensions was 194 per 10,000 population in 2007 compared with 167 in 1995.

The rate of male children and youth apprehended decreased over the period while the number of females remained steady.

Maori children remain five times more likely to be apprehended than their Pacific or Pakeha counterparts. Maori youth were three times more likely.

Youth prosecutions -- rather than a warning or referral to family conferences -- rose, up to 28.1 percent of apprehensions in 2007 from 13.2 in 1995.

Supervision with residence or activity are the severest penalties imposed by the Youth Court. In 2007, supervision with residence was imposed in 13.4 percent of proven cases and supervision with activity in 4.5 percent.

Supervision alone was imposed in 20.5 percent and 14.9 percent were fined or ordered to pay reparation.

Of young people convicted in adult courts, 23 percent were imprisoned, 29.4 percent received a community-based sentence and 20.4 percent received a fine.

The Government wants to widen the powers of the Youth Court with a range of new sentencing options including sending the worst repeat offenders to military-style camps run by the army.

Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft said boot camps were "arguably the least successful sentence in the Western world". New Zealand's corrective training camps of the past made young people, "healthier, fitter, faster, but they were still burglars, just harder to catch".

He said the drop in apprehension rates was "good news" but the increase in violent offending could not be ignored.

National's Chester Borrows said last month the military-style camps were getting a bad rap from the opposition and the media.

He said people's concept of what the programmes would be was not what was envisioned.

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