Putting in the Boot
National is introducing its “Boot Camp” legislation into parliament today, designed to give young offenders up to three months of military-style training camps. I recall that when they first announced the policy in the election run up, it was dismissed as a piece of populist legislation by the media and most left-wing blogs, apparently on the grounds that it doesn’t work.
The American experience of boot camps is that they have limited value as this report (PDF) shows:
- Participants reported positive short-term changes in attitudes and behaviors; they also had better problem-solving and coping skills.
- With few exceptions, these positive changes did not lead to reduced recidivism. The boot camps that did produce lower recidivism rates offered more treatment services, had longer sessions, and included more intensive postrelease supervision. However, not all programs with these features had successful results.
- Under a narrow set of conditions, boot camps can lead to small relative reductions in prison populations and correctional costs.
This summary is a long way from saying that boot camps were unsuccessful, merely that the haphazard American form of boot camps was only partially successful. The report points out that the research was difficult to collate because of the wide variety of formats of boot camps and the wide range of research methods.
It is no surprise that the boot camps that had lower recidivism rates were longer and had more pre and post release rehabilitation. I note that National is proposing a maximum of three months in boot camp. This would probably be better as six months to a year, with intensive rehabilitation and skill learning programs as well. Extensive mentoring programs during and after boot camp are also essential.
The American report seems mildly dismissive of the small gain of reduced recidivism. However, as the cost of the program does not appear to be larger than the cost of a normal prison incarceration, I would submit that even a small gain is a worthwhile one.
It would be instructive if the statistics for recidivists from boot camps are broken down into gang and non-gang affiliated youths. I suspect that the tribal nature of gang kids would lend itself to the boot camp ideology. It is possible the recidivism rate might be better than expected in this situation.
All in all, I think I will reserve judgement on boot camps for a couple of years. They may turn out better than anyone currently expects.
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Feb 16 09 10:38 pm
As an early baby boomer (1944), my memories of early life outside of school lessons were of chores, rugby and bullrush at playtime, an awful lot of swimming, Cadets, Health Camps and CMT.
From this distance it all seems so full of activity and quite democratic. After all, if the leaders wanted a good field for bullrush they had to accede to the wishes of the younger and weaker members. Across the fence the girls were busy with two thirds of the time organising their sport and just a few minutes actually playing.
The military were particularly democratic.. even the most gormless had to march and learn rifle drill etc.
The NZ birthrate peaked at about 4.2 children per woman in 1960.. and it seems in hindsight that all that sport and activity and organisation was increasingly needed to handle all that budding testosterone and premature potential nesting.
Much of all the above has gone now, but fertility is still up there in the Maori and PI populations, and the outlets for testosterone and premature nesting not there as they once were. And such activities ain’t cool anymore.
All of which is a rambling way of saying that a population of 1960s and 70s once had a median age of 25 and an age of first birth of 25 compared to around 36 now.. and we had our own versions of Boot Camp all the way from 5-18. I suggest that we need more of an organised approach to leisure time at our schools and the sort of programmes we had like Health Camps, Cadets and later CMT.
JC