Jesus wept, even NZ military running boot camps know they won’t work…
NZDF documents reveal serious concerns about youth offender boot camps
New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) documents warned the Government in January that military-style training does not work for complex participants and has previously resulted in serious mental and physical harm of defence personnel, 1News can reveal.
It also revealed correspondence with Defence Minister Judith Collins saying comparing the six-week NZDF Limited Service Volunteer (LSV) programme to its proposed 12-month youth offender military academies was “not accurate” and could create “public misunderstanding” about NZDF’s role in the programme.
In documents released to 1News under the Official Information Act, the NZDF said in a briefing to Collins that the LSV scheme has experienced a “range of complex challenges”.
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) found it “difficult” to generate the right number of trainees to match investment and so provided more trainees who would not have previously been considered appropriate for the scheme prior to 2018.
This caused a “significant” increase in the “complexity”, or mental readiness to commit to military training, of LSV trainees, the briefing said.
Prior to 2018, the NZDF deployed capability for a ratio of up to 30% trainee complexity on any course.
“Where the complexity ratio of trainees on a course is above 30%, the course graduation rate falls sharply.
“More seriously, the risk to other trainees and NZDF staff spiked to the point where in 2022/23, with the complexity ratio of trainees rising to 50 and 60% in some cases, 10 NZDF staff suffered serious mental harm including several cases of suicidal ideation.”
The number of physical assaults on staff also increased, causing decreased morale, wellbeing, and retention among personnel, the briefing read.
The proposed youth offender military academies would have a 100% complexity rate.
…Wow.
This whole charade is just a bullshit exercise in throwing raw meat to the Right’s reactionary angry voter base rather than any attempt to solve the problem!
Let’s be 100% clear here.
If you are Right Wing you don’t care Military Boot Camps don’t work, all you care about is that kids you despise get the bash from some brutal Full Metal Jacket level Boot Camp fantasy!
Admit it, you known this doesn’t work, you just want revenge and a sense these kids are frightened and yelled at.
You know it’s all counter productive but this is redneck vengeance being passed as social policy to make right wing voters feel a sense of power in their powerless lives.
There is no science based research that proves these things work and that’s fine by the Right because it’s not about facts, it’s about right wing revenge.
Right wing ‘feelings; have replaced Left wing ‘feelings’ as policy and we are all worse off!
If, in running these camps, NZDF staff themselves are being mentally and physically injured, then Luxon has to establish mechanisms for their protection and procedures for them to take action against their employer as in any other dangerous workplace.
If NZDF or any other employees forced to carry out government edicts are damaged, then they are entitled to compensation, and this needs to be costed in and made publicly available to the tax payers footing the bill. Apart from Britain’s Bunker Prince Harry, soldiers going to war do so knowing that they may be killed or injured, but being forced into such scenarios in peace time is worse than unconscionable, is bullying, and legally questionable.
We would be better to spend these millions and the billions we are spending on new jails ,on prevention in the first instance .My 5 year old grandson was assulted at school and ended up with concussion .Further investigation led me to find that the offending 5 year old was constantly subjected to this type of behaviour in the home .Right now is the time to attend to that childs well being not when he is 18 and a has been a thug for another 13 years .Clearly the family needs some big interventions right now not next year or the year after ,bight now today .But the skin head and the gang of thugs he leads dont care they just want more kids to put in boot camps so they can feel good kicking the shit out of them .
You would think that a so called Christian like Luxon would know that forced obedience does not work, Christ said “If you love me keep my commandments” which should be enough to demonstrate that people need to be willing to obey before any change in behaviour can happen.
While there is a section of the population who obey the rules due to a fear of the consequences and an inability to understand the issues involved you can be sure that they do as little as possible and they are not nice company. An almost universal reaction is that there is no respect for those making and enforcing unjust requirements which ends up creating further division within society so what the simple minded law makers intended to improve society ends up making it worse.
Bonnie Christian or not, a person like Luxon saying that he doesn’t care whether or not govt policy works isn’t fit to be Prime Minister, IMHO.
I agree with you
Don’t know why NZDF are having anything at all to do with ‘Boot Camps’.
That is NOT why people join the NZDF.
Didn’t we learn that when NZDF personnel were employed to ‘guard inmates’ of isolation hotels during Covid? Following that, recruitment to NZDF fell off markedly.
Now the present government are making the same mistake. No adults in the room when making this decision!
People do NOT join NZDF to ‘guard’ civilians nor do they join NZDF to look after recalcitrant young tearaways.
As TDB said a while back–“get tougher on poverty not crime”…which requires a strong state and taxing the well off and corporates to pay for it.
Bullying already traumatised teens is not going to fix anything.
It is classic “both the rich and the poor can sleep under bridges” territory–denying social reality.
The only upside seems to be the twelve months of less victims the community has to suffer due to these young criminals being “quarantined” .
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Yes, totally agree that if these kids are sent down to a so called full, metal jacket styled boot camp, as has had happened in the past, then this programme is doomed to fail. However if these bootcamps are thought out, and there is also some external assistance added such as mental health and substance abuse help put on offer with the standard accommodation and meals alongside a variety of activities and a taste of what they as individuals might be able to achieve as an alternative to what they are currently in to, then perhaps this scheme could work with some real positive outcomes being achieved. One can only but try.
No – it’s worse. OT is going to be running both the “residential” and “community” phases of this future-to-be clusterfunk.
and while we are about it we will cut funding for budgeting services and only fund the ones in the big smoke so anyone who needs help will have to travel 100 km each way using fuel they cant buy because they have no money thats why they need help .seems like a bloody stupid idea to cut funding in the middle of the wost recession since 1980
National are so clumsy and ham-fisted – it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Only the blue rinse boomer brigade buy this backwards looking grift.
Youre so right about it being about the feels.
The right feel good that they are doing something other than putting kids straight into prison. If they try bootcamps first they will be absolved.
“100% complexity”
The idea that a bit of military discipline is good for society I think comes from the WW2 generation. After the war across the society blokes felt they had served together, sacrificed somewhat equally and an egalitarian society was then run by both parties and that’s what alleviated some poverty. But during the war Kiwi soldiers were reknowned for nicking shit particularly from the yanks.
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