Kerre Woodham: The bootcamp is worth a try, isn't it?

The pilot for military-style academies that are designed to turn around persistent young offenders will get underway by the middle of the year. Ten young people initially, and they'll spend up to four months —that is all the legislation allows— within their Academy.  

And therein lies the problem, because according to all the best experts and best practice, it takes at least 12 months to break old habits and establish new ones. But the legislation doesn't allow it, so the four-month pilot will go ahead in the middle of the year.  

It will be run along military lines, although under the auspices of Oranga Tamariki, and that bodes ill. They couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. They don't seem to have been a terribly good manager of the young people in their care thus far.  

But there will also be a rehabilitation component and trauma informed care approach, whatever that means. I'm assuming counselling sessions, a psychological component to work on what is triggering these young people to behave the way they do.  

It will be for the most persistent and serious young offenders. And again, the key will be the length of the program. You can't unlearn bad habits that have taken years to become entrenched in just a matter of weeks. You and I know that. You know when you're trying to turn around our own bad habits, it's hard. So, imagine these young people who have only ever known the life they have known that has led them down this path being asked to completely transform their lives in a matter of weeks.  

The other key is the support for the young people when they emerge from what is basically a cocoon. They're insulated from reality, therein their own world. They don't have to make any decisions for themselves that's taken care of. For the first time in their lives, perhaps they'll be expected to be somewhere. They'll be given food regularly. They would have to forage to survive. So, you come out of that and back into real life and that's where in the past, the programs have tripped themselves up.  

Blue Light, which used to run discos in my day, is a registered charity that works in partnership with the police to deliver a range of youth programs and is the type of organisation that will be providing wrap around care once young offenders try to reintegrate back into the community, as Blue Light’s Chief operating Officer Brendan Crompton explained on the Mike Hosking breakfast this morning. 

 

"In the New Zealand context, you’ve got two choices. When kids offend, they can either do a community-based sentence, which is what Blue Light runs, or kids can go to youth jail. So those already exist. What they’re looking at is the most persistent youth offenders, and they’re not a big group. But there are a group of persistent youth offenders who will become persistent adult offenders, who need more intensive time and support. Away from, essentially, either negative parental involvement, because the parents’ involved in gangs or crime themselves, or more commonly, what I call parental non-involvement. The parents don’t know where their 10, 11, 12-year-olds are at three o’clock in the morning.  

“So they’re saying, how can we? How can we have a residential programme that’s more intensive? And then obviously the part that is where we’d be involved is when the kids are released from that period inside. What’s the wraparound support to make sure they aren’t back off and offending again?” 

 

It is hard. One of my most memorable callers was a man called Joe who left Hawkes Bay after coming out of prison. He’d been involved in gangs there. He had to leave and come to Auckland to get away from the gang influence, the gang lifestyle. He didn't want to go to prison again. He was done. But it is so, so hard trying to start a new life. He did incredibly well. He got a job; an employer and was very honest about his past. His employer was willing to give him a chance, but try and find rent, try and find a place to rent and pay the rent on your own in Auckland. He ended up living in his car while still working. His boss let him use the showers and the bathrooms in the morning to get ready for work. We lost touch, we lost contact. I hope he's well. I hope he managed to keep going in the new direction, he was trying to forge for himself. But boy, it's tough. And that's with a grown man who's made that decision. Imagine the young ones coming out.   

The wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical because boot camps, as you well know, have been tried before and they have failed. Only two of the 17 youth offenders sent to the camps across the first two years of the scheme in the late 2000s had not reoffended by 2011. In 2017, sociologist and crime expert Jared Gilbert said the effect of boot camps was quite minimal and would basically just make young crooks a bit stronger and a bit fitter.  

During the election campaign, Christopher Luxon and Mark Mitchell, the Police Spokesperson then, Police Minister now, were really strong on youth crime as well they might have been given the amount of ram raids that were taking place across the country. They said the boot camp policy is going to act as a circuit breaker for young offenders, taking them off the streets and after 12 months, sending them back into the world work ready.  

Well, I'm not entirely sure that we can expect them to be work ready. Just not ram-raiding Michael Hill would be a start. Not beating up each other would be a start. But proponents for the camp say the difference this time is the rehabilitative aspect, the counselling aspect. The recognition that these kids aren't necessarily bad. A lot of them are sad. So, working together on keeping them off the streets so they don't continue to victimize. Working on them so that they understand where the behaviours come from, trying to. Try to heal whatever mental trauma they have endured in the past. It's the length of time of the camp and the wrap around support back in the real world, which will be absolutely vital.  

So I'd love to get your thoughts on this one. There is a youth development program in the military that if you heard the interview with Brendan Crompton this morning, you have heard him talk about that. A youth development program in the military, which is phenomenally successful, he said. It's world renowned, but that's when you've got young people who are choosing to be there. It's military by consent, if you will. So, in this case you've got young people and probably it is the last thing they want.  

So, will it work this time? I hope so because there are significant differences. It is a small group of kids who will go on to offend as adults and they will end up having miserable lives for the most part. And making other people's lives misery.  

So, it's worth a try, isn't it? 

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