Military style boot camps for young people
[edit] Oh, and take the chance while it’s still on the website to listen to Radio NZ’s Morning Report interview with the Lieutenant Colonel Phil McKee of the Limited Service Volunteer scheme out of Burnham Military Camp. The Burnham Military Camp was lauded by John Key as a model for the type of boot camps he wants to make compulsory for young offenders. McKee is not so sure. It seems the National Party research unit didn’t get much past Google.
Bookmark to:
January 30th, 2008 at 8:28 am
What idea’s do the Greens have to combat youth violence Frog? (apart from giving them more money)
January 30th, 2008 at 10:05 am
legalise pot bro..!
keep em sedated..!
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 30th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
What a lame opening address by John Key, Did he get that from the same electioneering guide book as Winston Peters and Hitler?
What ever happened to inspiration and vision? Negative scaremongering and picking on a group in society with limited or no ability to fight back is hardly opening address material? Prisoners and under 18 can’t even vote - very ’safe’ territory. I thought National stood for business and the economy and I was looking forward to having some substantial policy to critique - lame! Runty old Brash had heaps more gumption!
Nice critique tho Russel - good practice I guess for if we ever see and real policy out of this hollow man!
Big bro and Phil - do you think this one will see out the year? he came across as a bit of a weakling - hardly our next PM? Or were the campaign team easing him into it and deliberately playing safe? or was he sedated?
January 30th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
McTap
Make no mistake, I do not have a lot of time for Mr Key, IMHO he is a middle of the road politician where as I prefer my politicians to be from the right.
he is however a far better option that what we currently have, he is dignified and not tainted by corruption and sleaze, sadly this cannot be said of the current govt.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Big Bro,
Then you should would admire Adolf Hitler as your style of politician. You could not get a politician more further over to the right than him!
January 30th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I dont think he actually was to the right, he was just one of those authoritarian-genocidal types. His economics etc were more middle of the road, according to the politicalcompass.org
January 30th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
BB asked: What idea’s do the Greens have to combat youth violence Frog?
Try these ones, BB:
The age at which offenders first enter the criminal justice system is significant, as the majority of male offenders in the adult system first entered the system as young people.
The Green Party will:
1. Maintain the age of criminal responsibility at 14.
2. Support the establishment of small-scale and dispersed Youth Rehabilitation Centres to end the detention of young people in police cells and adult prisons, and to intensively address serious youth offending.
3. Extend the problem-solving approach of the Youth Drug Court to other areas of the justice system. It has cut re-offending by addressing substance addiction rather than simply punishment.
Family Group Conferences (FGC) are the lynchpin of the youth justice system in New Zealand. FGC involves the offending youth, the victims, and their families in decision making, with the objective of reaching a decision by group consensus. The Green Party will:
4. Increase funding for training of FGC convenors.
5. Ensure that victims are provided with adequate information about FGCs in order to encourage a higher proportion to attend.
6. Increase resources for FGC to ensure the adequate monitoring and accountability of FGC outcomes
and these ones:
Ensure that all schools and early childhood services have policies, practices, and programmes to create a whole school culture that is inclusive and supports the elimination of prejudice, racism, bullying intimidation, and violence.
Support and fund initiatives that create positive school and societal violence-free cultures, e.g. QPEC (Quality Public Education Coalition) Values in Schools Programme, GSE’s Eliminating Violence Programme, the Peace Foundation’s Cool Schools Programme, and the PPTA’s Safe Schools Programme for queer students, whanau/family, and teachers.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to just go on the website and find that?
Sounds like they do good work over at Burnham, but it is obviously right of the Lieutenant Colonel to draw attention to the fact they normally deal with volunteers and DON’T normally deal with violent offenders who are compelled to be there.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Toad
Thanks for that, it seems to me that the Greens are disappointingly soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime.
FGC are a joke, they achieve NOTHING and the victim (the person of least importance in the eyes of the hard left) is left feeling that the entire system is working for the criminal and not the victim.
The schools initiative is interesting, I would be dead against your social engineering programs, school is not the place to indoctrinate our kids with left wing propaganda, they should be at school to learn the basics and learn about the past, that way they can form their own opinion without having the PC opinion forced down their throat.
January 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Can you post my comment please
January 30th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
If you’d been and looked at the webpage again, you see the title of a press release:
January 30th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
That was from Dec 17, 2007. Though I suppose you might disagree with some of the proposals.
Schools should be the place to learn the basics etc…and it would unfortunately seem that they have something else new to teach every month (my media-spun perception). But in the same way that (early) school teaches sharing (social engineering), then why not teach critical thinking about those ‘PC’ issues that are raised above? ‘Violence is bad okay’ could work to an extent, but THINKING about such things that are very relevant to society outside of “basics and the past” (the oft-mentioned ‘real world) surely would have some use.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Very good point there Mctap: “Prisoners and under 18 can’t even vote - very ’safe’ territory.”
this is so strongly reminiscent of Ruth Richardson’s bashing of under age mums on benefits back in 1991…just goes to show that National still don’t seem to have learned anything in the past 17 years.
I mean really, how much beating round the ears will it take to make them understand that the Rogernomics/Ruthanasia didn’t work?
oh wait…from the point of view of the millionaire backers exposed in the Hollow Men those policies did work……
John Key’s whole approach here strikes me as exceptionally mean-spirited and petty.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
BB said: and the victim (the person of least importance in the eyes of the hard left) is left feeling that the entire system is working for the criminal and not the victim.
BB, there is more, including these specific Green Party policy points re victims’ rights:
2. Righting wrongs and compensating victims of crime
While the Green Party has worked hard to strengthen victims’ rights in the criminal justice system, appropriate compensation and restoration for complainants is still inadequate and the need for reform is overdue. The Green Party wants to strengthen the rights of victims and will:
1. Hold an inquiry into the role of victims in the criminal justice system, and into what support systems exist for victims of serious crime.
2. Support provisions to deduct unpaid restitution and court fines through the IRD or Income Support and close loopholes to ensure that family or other trusts will cease to be a way of avoiding liability. When offenders receive Income Support (or are of limited means) they should be given a choice to either pay off fines or provide restitution in some other way.
3. Research the viability of state-awarded compensation for victims as well as provision for some offenders, when deemed appropriate, to be required to recompense the state for at least part of the compensation outlay.
4. Provide counselling and compensation for victims, preferably paid for by the offender, where they have the ability to do so.
5. Research the viability of state-awarded compensation for victims where the offender must pay it back to the state.
Make the offender pay: now surely you would support that BB.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
BB, tried to respond with some more policy, but my response, or quoting you, got caught by the filters.
So will try again, just quoting a bit more Green policy:
2. Righting wrongs and compensating victims of crime
While the Green Party has worked hard to strengthen victims’ rights in the criminal justice system, appropriate compensation and restoration for complainants is still inadequate and the need for reform is overdue. The Green Party wants to strengthen the rights of victims and will:
1. Hold an inquiry into the role of victims in the criminal justice system, and into what support systems exist for victims of serious crime.
2. Support provisions to deduct unpaid restitution and court fines through the IRD or Income Support and close loopholes to ensure that family or other trusts will cease to be a way of avoiding liability. When offenders receive Income Support (or are of limited means) they should be given a choice to either pay off fines or provide restitution in some other way.
3. Research the viability of state-awarded compensation for victims as well as provision for some offenders, when deemed appropriate, to be required to recompense the state for at least part of the compensation outlay.
4. Provide counselling and compensation for victims, preferably paid for by the offender, where they have the ability to do so.
5. Research the viability of state-awarded compensation for victims where the offender must pay it back to the state.
Surely you can’t disagree with this.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Toad
Surely you did not expect me to agree with this?
Lets have a look at one or two of your points.
1. The best thing you can do for victims is to take away the chance that they may become victims in the first place, I cannot and will not agree with the Ambulance at the bottom of the cliff theory.
2. Restitution must be immediate (I do like the bit about family trusts) if the crims are on a benefit then too bad, the buggers must pay and pay immediatley
3. NO STATE COMPENSATION, this does not work and we all know that the crims will never pay it back or be made to pay it back under a socialist government.
4 Counseling is a waste of time, victims want justice and most want revenge, no amount of PC counseling would ease my anger or grief if a member of my family was murdered by some low life, I would want the killer in prison for the rest of his life without the chance of parole or better still he should be swinging from the hangman’s noose.
5 Again state compensation is not the way to go, why the hell should I pay for the crimes of some low life scum?, the only thing I want to pay for in his case is his long and extremely arduous prison sentence.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
# toad Says:
January 30th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
> Support and fund initiatives that create positive school and societal violence-free cultures, e.g. QPEC (Quality Public Education Coalition) Values in Schools Programme, GSE’s Eliminating Violence Programme, the Peace Foundation’s Cool Schools Programme, and the PPTA’s Safe Schools Programme for queer students, whanau/family, and teachers.
I think this is the most important thing we can do. If kids learn they can get away with bullying when in school, then outside school they’re going to feel they’re bulletproof and can get away with anything.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:18 am
i wonder if prehaps the world would be a better place if everyone was sociopathic, as long as they are smart enough to see the long term effects of their actions i imagine it would be so, hmm… emotion, thats what scr*ews us over.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:26 am
kahikatea, I don’t really imagine they’ll feel bulletproof, but violence would simply be regarded as a very legitimate option in disputes or…any situation really, especially in the heat of the moment where there tends to be the least regard for consequences (’crimes of passion’?)
February 2nd, 2008 at 2:32 am
“Prisoners and under 18 can’t even vote - very ’safe’ territory.” So that’s why Labour wants to make under 18s prisoners of the education system.
If National’s solution to youth crime will just produce stronger young thugs then surely Labour’s solution will just produce smarter young thugs.
The seeds are sown in infancy, whether it’s genius or thuggery. It is easy to unleash genius or thuggery in a three year old but it takes an increasingly concerted and sustained effort to achieve the same results as the child grows older. But as with all things it is easier to teach bad habits than good ones since bad behaviour tends to follow the path of least resistance.
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 am
Prisoners can vote.
Only those serving terms of longer than 3 years can’t vote (that’s not very many of them).
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
given 60 to 80% of young kiwis are into pot, maybe Phil u’s flippant suggestion isnt so stupid - Legalising (regulating) pot would not cause mass sedation however, as the international comparasoms suggest use is already at satuaration point in NZ, BECAUSE of prohibition.
and it would stop the cycle of violation where the state is creating a significant amount of alienation with the policing of this particular issue.
(and pot doesnt sedate as such anyway, at least not in moderation…..)
How much damage is being done with the current crime promoting bogus legal status and double standards and why, is there no green party connection between nz’s youth crime and the social injustice of pot enforcemetn and hypocrisy (the partys own controversial policy, duh).
Once again the greens are avoiding mentioning cannabis at teh expense of finding a real solution to a social/environmental situation.
in my view criminalisation is the self-fullfulling policy. the abuse of civil/human rights and due process etc and falsely implemented ‘harm minimisation’, has a price to pay, and the chickens are coming home to roost, and have been for several decades now.
but the overriding political/media/justice world view (c.f. flat earth society) is that drugs cause moral breakdown and crime. Never consider for a moment that a bad dysfunctional law is a catalyst for social damage (earth is actually round, Labour, National and greens…).
are you as intellectually dishonest as those big parties, greens? your not going to get the cannabis albatross from around your neck by pretending it aint there…
like silly helen and her dumb-ass ministers, and all the get-tough parties, youll never have the youth solution frog and russel, if you dont do a proper systems analysis of what is fucking them up and making bad behavour teh normal expectation.
values are upside down in this country. wrongful and corrupt cannabis regime is at the heart of that.