When is a Boot Camp Not a Boot Camp? When it’s a Big Mac!

The National government has been hoisted by it’s own petard, in allowing the MAC (Military Activity Camp) run out of Rolleston, to be labelled as a ‘boot camp” says Kim Workman, Director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment. He was commenting on the latest report, which shows that only two of the 17 young offenders sent to MAC camps have not reoffended. MAC camps are part of the government’s Fresh Start programme.

“It seems that government wanted to promote the idea that it was taking a ‘get tough’ approach to young offenders. It has remained silent, while the media have continued to label the MAC activity as ‘boot camps’.

“The nearest thing we had in New Zealand to a traditional boot camp was corrective training for young offenders – a short, sharp three month prison sentence, that produced a 90% reoffending rate after 12 months. It was harsh, punitive, cruel, and hopelessly ineffective.”

MAC camps are very different, for the following reasons:

• They are not a stand alone sentence – you cannot be sentenced to a boot camp.
• They are an appendage to the sentence of ‘supervision with residence’ sentence, which has been around for about 21 years;
• It lasts for nine weeks – the residential sentence could last six months.
• It caters for ten boys at a time, and MSD runs 3 to 4 programmes a year.
• In those nine weeks, one week is spent on a five day “camp”.
• There is one Army officer at the residence every day for nine weeks, providing some exercise/activities and/or drills, during shorts breaks in the structured programme.
• On one day a week, the army leads involvement in some form of community activity or service – that also applies to all the residents.
• The five day camp is an Army supervised ‘outward bound’ programme , with wilderness activity, team building and so on. There is an emphasis on physical exercise and consequential thinking. Drill and army activity take up about 30 minutes a day.

“In the last week of the camp, family and whanau are flown to the camp, together with the young person’s field social worker, to plan for their transition. Strangely, this service is not available to young people who have not been on the camp.”

“A camp of that kind, if it is well run, provides good role models, good team building, and instills a real sense of purpose and pride in those involved. What it does not do, is address conduct disorder, drug, alcohol and mental health issues, and all the other underlying issues that contribute to offending. For that reason it will have no impact on the reduction of reoffending, and it is unfair of the government to expect that it will.”

“The government need to stop make it clear to the public that the MAC activity is not a boot camp, and is not a “get tough” measure.

ENDS

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