National promises stronger, more skilled criminals

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 pm, August 13th, 2017 - 28 comments
Categories: crime, national - Tags:

Despite their bootcamp policy being a complete failure, National are going to send our most “hardened” youth offenders to the Army to be trained up.

If that fails, they’ll send them to adult prisons to learn their craft better.

How does this make any sense?

Aotearoa was one of the earliest onto diverting children and youth away from the adult justice system, with excellent results, that have been copied around the world.  People who commit crime in their youth often don’t continue on to commit crime in adulthood – unless you train them into it.

If you’ve got something that’s made a massive improvement, why would you revert?  Why would you firstly make them much fitter & stronger, and then hand them over to real hardened criminals to complete their education?

[teaser picture: National’s 2008 policy to increase training for youth to keep them away from trouble… what happened to that?]

28 comments on “National promises stronger, more skilled criminals ”

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  1. Incognito 1
    13 August 2017 at 8:42 pm

    How does this make any sense?

    Short answer: 23 September 2017.

  2. KJT 2
    13 August 2017 at 8:52 pm

    “Tough on crime” must appeal to a certain cadre of bigoted swing voters.

  3. KJT 3
    13 August 2017 at 8:53 pm

    National. Not happy with the serial child abuse of 300 thousand children in poverty, doubles down on the victims.

  4. aom 4
    13 August 2017 at 9:42 pm

    In another life, my job expectation was to send young persons who had absconded from punitive Social Welfare institutions to Borstal. Subsequently, when that was ditched, it was Corrective Training, the boot camp incarceration option. Both options failed, as was predictable in terms of the extensive research that was already available at that time. Borstal turned out totally inadequate human beings from institutions that were not too dissimilar to the ‘king-pin’ culture of the fictional TV drama Wentworth. Subsequently, Corrective Training produced superfit motivated graduates that soon learned that social prejudice compromised their new-found optimism, so they became physically adept crims who had newly established cadres of skilled criminal operatives to support them in nefarious survival endeavours. Along the way, there was the opportunity to observe the highly media driven initiative of Graeme Dingle for prisoners who were going to be the new boot-camp exemplars of model citizens. It turned out that Dingle was the only one who assaulted anyone and subsequently, he was saved after falling in a river, by gangsters, who functioned according to their typical social survival creed.
    If anyone is persuaded to buy into Nationals bullshit dog whistle politics, they deserve to suffer from their own stupidity when it goes pear-shaped. The solutions are not simple but internationally, there are plenty of examples of how to resolve the problems of disaffected youth with more constructive options.
    Finally, way back then, it turned out that the likelihood of re-offending was reduced by trusting families to look after their own by providing a modicum of trust and respect – but that was before beneficiary families were relentlessly marginalised for being poor and were not kept below the poverty line. Imagine what might happen if some of the generous payments the Government propose to throw around were provided for the benefit of families they marginalise with gay abandon.

  5. In Vino 5
    13 August 2017 at 10:49 pm

    Yes. I felt the same at the introduction of Rogernomics – These deluded fools asked us to vote in policies that would soon produce a hell-hole of a society. From what you write, I think that the dumb-arses are still working hard. I would like to hope that the voters are now less dumb. But who knows?

    • KJT 5.1
      14 August 2017 at 6:43 pm

      Well. we tried to vote them out. But under FPP the only alternative was Bolger and Richardson.

      Who responded to the recession labour caused, by doubling down on more of the same.

      Hence the support for MMP, and referendum, . No one wanted to give any Government the same amount of power again. Of course our elected Dictators managed to subvert that also.

  6. lprent 6
    14 August 2017 at 8:27 am

    Hey – this is just National delivering on their promise to “Blight the Future”.

    I am sure that is what their campaign slogan was a few campaigns back.

    Just think, in a few years we could have a more disciplined class of criminal preying upon us. Some of them may even become National MPs in a natural criminal progression.

  7. James 7
    14 August 2017 at 9:28 am

    As someone who had (an overseas) family member go to the army to “sort themselves out” I can only see positives. It turned his life around.

    Obviously the current system isn’t working for some people. Perhaps this will give a some new perspective and actually help some of these people.

    • Ben Clark 7.1
      14 August 2017 at 9:46 am

      And yet… the evidence suggests otherwise. It’s been tried & failed, and researchers have done the science. But you just keep on believing the party line James. (somehow someone putting themselves in the army to “sort themselves out” seems different from being sentenced to it, don’t you think?)

      Bill was giving the line this morning of “Something must be done! This is something! Therefore, we must do it!”

    • Draco T Bastard 7.2
      14 August 2017 at 5:59 pm

      As someone who had (an overseas) family member go to the army to “sort themselves out” I can only see positives. It turned his life around.

      It works for some people but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule.

      Obviously the current system isn’t working for some people.

      That’s probably because it’s overly punitive and takes people’s hope away – exactly as National designed it.

      Perhaps this will give a some new perspective and actually help some of these people.

      Why would it work this time when it didn’t work last time?

    • McFlock 7.3
      14 August 2017 at 6:05 pm

      did they go of their own volition, or were they sent by the courts?

  8. AsleepWhileWalking 8
    14 August 2017 at 9:36 am

    For several years now the High School where I live has been forced to run a program to help kids being left behind because the have moved so many times their schooling has been interrupted. We’re talking 6 – 15 schools before they reach what would have been 3rd form. And its common.

    Basics first.

  9. savenz 9
    14 August 2017 at 10:37 am

    Agree 100% with BUNJI. We need to turn back to what works and turn around the youth early, not use the slogans from National that don’t work but sound good to uneducated voters and have the added bonus of “helpfully diverting” tax payers money into private businesses like Borstals.

    Likewise with education and National Standards. A complete and utter disaster aka National’s idea. Take NZ’s fantastic world renounced primary and secondary education system and destroy it with a US style system that is PROVEN not to work. All so they can destroy the teacher union and make kids as young as 5 be told they are a failure earlier. Well done fuckers.

    Getting onto tertiary another fuck up, now we are more interested in getting bums on seats with private institutions that seem to be just immigration frauds. Meanwhile the money for world class tertiary education has disappeared and now people who wanted vocational work such as building or drain laying who used to learn and be paid on the job, now have to take out loans for expensive courses while the industry is desperate for workers and we now have to pay $500 to get a toilet fixed (not to mention the plumbing fixtures might be counterfeit). Another FUCK UP.

    It’s April fools every day with National, can we please all agree to vote them out in a few weeks time!

  10. greywarshark 10
    14 August 2017 at 1:33 pm

    Will we get all the info on the Boot Camp program?
    The police say they are into evidence-based programs. Dr Jarrod Gilbert criminologost at Canterbury says that the Boot Camp program usually doesn’t work. The police have said they will work with Dr Gilbert in the past. Maybe we will find out something useful through them. Or will enquiries have to be channelled through the Defence Force, who often become defensive!

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74521431/police-uturn-on-research-after-claims-academic-freedom-threatened
    28/11/2015
    In The Nation TV3 interview it was suggested to [Police Commissioner Mike Bush] Bush the aim of the contracts was to keep a lid on things that may be perceived as negative for the police.

    “That’s why we will be changing the wording of that policy and what it’s about because the frustrating thing is it’s the opposite that’s true in terms of where we’re at at the moment,” Bush said.

    “We’re wanting to build great relationships with academia because we are determined to be a very evidence-based police service.”

  11. Robert Guyton 11
    14 August 2017 at 5:47 pm

    Talk back radio, bless it, has slated National’s Boot Camp proposal all day long; an unrelenting rejection of the tried-and-failed policy, with a sprinkling a pity for the tried-and-failed National Government.

  12. BM 12
    14 August 2017 at 6:22 pm

    Most of the kids who will end up in these boot camps are going to be Maori.
    These young Maori boys will be getting mentored by very disciplined Maori soldiers and they will respond well to it.

  13. Exkiwiforces 13
    14 August 2017 at 11:21 pm

    Bring back the Regular Force Cadets might be cheaper in long run? Oh hang on the Nationals disbanded the RFC in the 90’s and we can’t have that now.

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