Boot camp plan comes under fire By EMILY WATT
The Dominion Post
05:00 30/04/09
Plans to criminalise 12-year-olds and to introduce three-month military-style "boot camps" will do little to reduce offending, and in some cases may increase it, experts say.
The Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders Amendment Bill widens the court's jurisdiction to 12- and 13-year-olds and expands sentencing to include mentoring and military-style camps.
The Families Commission, Unicef and Barnardos told the law and order select committee military-style training did not work, and in some cases increased recidivism.
"We found no evidence whatsoever that it does anything other than to prepare young people to live in a military world, not be good family members," Chief Families Commissioner Jan Pryor said. "In some instances they have been shown to increase offending."
It follows comments from principal Youth Court judge Andrew Becroft calling them "arguably the least-successful sentence in the Western world".
Unicef's Barbara Lambourn said the bill pandered to "populist and ill-informed pitchfork-and-torches mentality" and said harsher punishment increased the likelihood of reoffending. It also breached United Nations conventions. "...Children's rights are being knowingly disregarded."
The same groups and the Law Society also opposed extending Youth Court jurisdiction to 12- and 13-year-olds. Family Court barrister Allan Cooke said there was no evidence this would make communities safer.
Dr Pryor said she could see no wisdom of putting 12- and 13-year-olds in a court dock. "We do not argue that these children are too young to know right from wrong. But they're too young to comprehend the procedures."
Putting children in the criminal justice system also left them vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse and "put them in the company of their peer group which is just ideal for teaching criminality".
But the Police Association supported moving 12- and 13-year-olds to the Youth Court because it had the expertise to deal with the offenders. The Family Court process was complex and lengthy and could not deal with serious offending.
Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett said critics of boot 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." She said the camps would be followed up with good family support.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2373582/Boot-camp-plan-comes-under-fire