Another Military Boot Camp Failure
Children’s Minister Karen Chhour claims a third bootcamp participant accused of reoffending
Children’s Minister Karen Chhour says a third bootcamp participant is accused of reoffending but is giving no further details as the Government defends its young offender rehabilitation pilot.
It’s the latest development relating to the military-style academy pilot after one participant died in a car accident two weeks ago before two others went missing for days and were allegedly involved in an attempted armed carjacking.
Chhour made the statement in the House today under questioning from Labour MP Willow-Jean Prime about the extent of reoffending from the pilot’s now nine members.
“There has been three young people that have had accusations of re-offending,” Chhour said.
Asked whether Oranga Tamariki had advised her of any other incidents, Chhour said: “Nothing that is in the public interest currently”.
When Minister Chhour started making very grand claims about her more robust programmes with their ‘Military Boot Camp’ branding, I wondered if she was being advised properly because I’ve watched the best intentions for Child Welfare implode and destroy everything they touch in the past.
I think the current Oranga Tamariki is the 13th time this welfare agency has been rebranded.
Her certainty that what she was proposing was the right thing to do, that dumping 7AA and pushing ahead with a $5million dollar Military Boot Camp virtue signal would make some fundamental difference in outcome seems either delusional or really naive.
As a Politician who went through the State care system and was hurt by it, I’ve always wanted to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt, but her decision on repealing 7AA was utterly wrong and her Military Boot Camps were never going to work.
That the programme is spinning out of control with 1 dead and 3 absconding, should be of no surprise to anyone.
This abuse stuff doesn’t work.
These are kids whop need deep and urgent counselling and therapy and healing.
Knocking the stuffing out of them sounds great when you are angry and frightened and watching News of ram raids, but that was due to the Covid lockdown and abused kids losing their shit.
Youth offending has dropped suddenly before any of the Governments wider policy had even been implemented ted so you can’t say their tough in crime approach bore early fruit because it hadn’t even been seeded.
We are failing this kids.
I’m under no illusions of the terrible things they’ve done, but that demands more energy, more resources and environments that are conducive to healing rather than punishing.
It’s so easy to manipulate everyone’s fears for retribution policies, but we need to stand for Mercy if Justice is to mean anything.
That’s why news that the Government intend to lengthen the stay at Military Boot Camps is so insane after so much failure…
Bootcamps: Christopher Luxon acknowledges youths could be in facility for longer under legislation
The Prime Minister has acknowledged the Government’s bootcamp legislationcould allow for serious young offenders to be placed in youth justice facilities for longer than the current three months.
At his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday afternoon, Christopher Luxonsaid the current pilot allowed for participants to stay in youth justice residences for three months, but the Government could look at extending that further as the regime is made permanent.
“It is just an option,” Luxon said. “We need to go through the full pilot evaluation.
…they are doubling down on a bad idea.
This is who we are is now. This is what we have mutated into.
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Untill we get rid of poverty and over population we will get no where .We could put 2000 kids a year through and never fix the problem .Once again we focus on the symptom and hide from the cause .
Agree with your thinking .Get ride of poverty and increase education. That will stop gangs growing and angry young people .Where we may differ is how we get there but would be an interesting discussion.
What dick head comments Nathan, Andrew. You’re both a couple knee jerk dumb asses who I wish a taste of your own medicine on you, in kind or maybe multiplied so you really get the message. Like a row of tumbling dominoes….just like the poor have you suffer once one thing goes wrong and falls over and causes the whole playhouse to come down.
Boot camp doesn’t work and never will, far better to have good quality evidence-based programs. Also, these boot camps are very expensive and are only there to prove a point from a very controlling and authoritative political party that wants us to be a little America.
‘basic living skills, and how to function in society.’
Who decides what the basic living skills are? Is it mothers should stay home and care for their children but they cannot because both parents have to work to pay their rent and bills? Is it parent must always be kind and caring even when they are stressed to the maximum by bills they cannot pay and exhausted from hours of work?
‘ How to function in society?’ What functions? (Do as you are told and shut up. Nobody wants to hear your complaints.) Which society? Skungy rentals in South Auckland? Villas in Devonport?
If you ever worked as a teacher Nathan you would see time and time again young people who come from homes where both parents work hard and care for their children, yet things still go wrong. There is not enough time or space to list all the times I saw this happen before I retired as a secondary teacher. We need better solutions that your fantasies about creating the Master Race.
bend down and take a knee before your lord baron – or it’s off with your ungrateful head
I don’t think that those in government think deeply about anything connected with parenting and how hard it must be not to have a job like theirs where you can say about anything and get away with it and do little physically.
I wonder if they have modelled their ideas on the cartoonist Giles portrayal of Grandma; she is a quiet but stern character both in nature and the beam. But Giles had a sense of humour and the ridiculous and the family survived though not as the toffs would approve.
Was Grandma in fact Giles himself?
Giles was very fond of Grandma. “From my point of view she’s the perfect instrument for getting away with murder”, he confessed: “I can say what I like and, as long as I put the words in her mouth, the chances are I’ll get away with it.” In Giles’ cartoons Grandma thus came to embrace every form of extreme opinion, from fervent Royalism to revolutionary socialism – she even had a portrait of Lenin on her bedroom wall. A strict disciplinarian, she not only supported hanging, but also, it seems, beheading and flogging. As Giles explained, she could be very aggressive and “violence, perhaps, is her keynote.”
But was she more than a useful mouthpiece? In 1992 Giles’ biographer, Peter Tory, felt that “perhaps, unconsciously, Carl based Grandma on himself”: “At his grumpiest and most difficult he is certainly closer to her than he is to any of his other characters. Certainly, when his mouth takes a down-turn and his glasses angrily reflect the light and his short white hair appears to bristle with irritation, all you would need to add would be a black, neck-high frock, a handbag and an umbrella and you would have Grandma.”
The growing physical resemblance was certainly noticed by his friends, and Giles himself admitted to being “like Grandma’s brother, only worse.” They certainly shared many characteristics, such as a deep hatred of traffic wardens and other petty officials…
https://www.kent.ac.uk/library-it/special-collections/british-cartoon-archive/carl-giles-trust-collection/giles-grandma