Analysis - “Boot camps” for young people who commit serious offending are coming back. The coalition government has promised to pilot “military-style academies” by the middle of the year - despite a wealth of international and New Zealand evidence that boot camps do not reduce reoffending.
It has been encouraging to see this evidence receive extensive media coverage and expert analysis. Less encouraging, however, has been the minister for children’s reported rejection of expert advice that the boot camp model is flawed and ineffective.
So, why do we keep returning to interventions that don’t work? For boot camps, there are at least three possible explanations.
First, they appeal to politicians who want to appear tough on crime, while also saying they are encouraging rehabilitation options.
Second, boot camps seem to have a strong appeal to common sense: people want to believe structure and military discipline can turn around young people’s lives, and this belief outweighs contradicting evidence.
Third, boot camps can take different forms, so evidence of their ineffectiveness can be avoided by claiming, as the minister has, that improvements will be made this time.
This seems unlikely, however, when the core features that characterise boot camps - strong discipline in particular - are a main reason they don’t work. To understand why, we need to look at the psychology of punishment and behaviour change.
I’ve been thinking about this. If we ignore any possible kickbacks and focus only on the politics, what do National have to gain from solving youth crime?
Obviously there’s a short term “we reduced youth crime” selling point. But on the other hand, National got into power (and has done in the past too) partly based on selling their hard on crime stance. Playing up RAM raids (which from previous discussion we know is a short term rise in a long term downward trend) and every news article to breed fear, while never mentioning the downward trend.
Basically, National are probably well aware that one of their selling points is looking like they are being tough on crime. And they are probably well aware that boot camps don’t work. But the brilliant thing about the plan is they can look like they are doing a lot to solve crime while actually doing nothing (maybe making it worse) so that next time they are out of government they can use it to get more votes and get back in.
Just my pessimistic take.
Sometimes the cynical view is the only logical explanation…but I suspect that you can’t ignore the kickbacks. I don’t know if NAFf; can think that far ahead; Occam’s razor leads me to providing kickbacks as the primary reason for the camps.
Fear has always worked to motivate conservative voters. Fear of youth criminals coupled with some simple, plausible sounding wrong “solution” is electorial gold for venal politicians and this three headed beast is as venal as they come