No Ms. Bennett, YOU miss the point

Boot-camp critics miss point, says Bennett
Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett has defended the military-style camps planned by the Government after the Families Commission said they would do little to reduce youth offending and in some cases might increase it. The Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders Amendment Bill will give the Youth Court new sentencing orders ranging from tight supervision to three-month stays in camps. If passed, it would enable the court to issue parenting orders and its jurisdiction would be extended to include 12- to 13-year-olds who committed serious crimes. Military-style camps, or boot camps, have been evaluated and have regularly been shown to "be ineffective at reducing crime", the Families Commission's submission to a parliamentary committee said. "This is because they emphatically do not address the underlying causes of offending, which are rooted in the offenders' home, school and community. "The offending of young people who have attended some of these camps has increased." Putting young offenders together and not addressing underlying causes of the offending creates a culture that reinforces criminal values, the commission said. National MP Chester Borrows said the camps were getting a bad rap. He said people's concept of what the programmes would be was not what was envisioned. Ms Bennett said the critics of the camps had "missed the point". "We are not lurching back to the days of packing all bad kids off to boot camps en masse for corrective training. "That has been tried and failed here and elsewhere."

No Ms. Bennett, YOU miss the point. When National launched this policy they specifically played up Boot Camps – John Key laboured the name, made reference to it whenever he could, and the reason was because Boot Camps are raw meat policy for the hard right who love this shit, the reality is that boot camps don’t work, there is no academic evidence whatsofuckingever that this nonsense bullshit works and to have Bennett and Borrows running around proclaiming ‘you’ve got it all wrong” when National played up the boot camp element at the time they launched this populist crap is demeaning to two talented National Party MPs.

Just like putting junk food back into schools, wasting millions on boot camps is for the benefit of redneck voters, Bennett and Borrows can pretend otherwise, but it’s just pretending.