NZAP Press Release:
Boot Camp policy is an Old Army Truck at the Bottom of the Cliff

The Prime Minister, Bill English has offered a policy to send young serious offenders to Waiouru Military camp as an alternative to jail.

New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists (NZAP) members are alarmed at the National Party’s apparent resurrection of punitive models of response to child and adolescent offending.

Boot camps don’t prevent young offenders reoffending. Studies reveal that military style interventions result in recidivism of an equal rate (Wilson, Mackenzie, and Mitchell (2008) or increased rates (Aos and colleagues (2001) than other interventions.

"The only factor that they could find that distinguished boot camps that worked from those that didn't was whether the youth received counselling.” said psychotherapist Suzy Timpson.

“There may be electoral appeal in an old-fashioned approach that our children can be whipped into shape through harsh treatment. However, this outdated idea needs to be put to rest. It’s not even an ambulance but an old army truck at the bottom of the cliff,” says Lynne Holdem, Public Issues spokesperson for NZAP.

“The behavior of these young people is a signal that they are alienated and disconnected from their families and communities. These policies will further punish the children of the poor, the mentally ill and the victims of colonial intergenerational trauma. Maori and Pacifika youth need a whole whanau and kaupapa approach to foster connection and heal children and their parents,” says Holdem.

“These children do not generally come from happy secure families and they need to have love and compassion as well as discipline and boundaries. Innovative programs like working with endangered native animals and birds model and teach empathy and care-giving to young people. Punishment alone doesn’t work” says Sheila Larsen, president of NZAP.

Graeme McCartney, Wellington psychotherapist, says he fails to see how an environment centred on punishment and aggressive “behaviour modification” could ever benefit vulnerable youth who have already been traumatised by violent and punishing behavior in their families and communities.

“In my 20 plus years experience of working in the mental health and addiction sector I have come into contact with countless traumatised adults, who, from a lack of self regulating skills, have then traumatised their own children, and the cycle continues. Once these people have received the appropriate support and treatment, most have been able to live different lives and have subsequently addressed the impact on their own children” says McCartney.

“If adults are able to make considerable changes in their lives after many years of difficulty, then obviously youth are able to do so as well, with much earlier intervention and appropriate treatment and support, McCartney says.

NZAP members want to see youth kept out of jail but they think a different approach is needed.

“If the powers that be are serious in addressing this very important issue, and the intergenerational trauma behind it, then perhaps they could put the money to much better use. For example the development of therapeutic communities, staffed by appropriately experienced therapists and mental health professionals, and centred on therapy, support, and education would not only heal the traumas of these very at risk youth, but would also address the very high youth suicide rates in NZ, and prevent the transmission of further trauma, by breaking the cycle,” says McCartney.

In the media over the last ten or so years there has been a plethora of information pertaining to how the vulnerable and marginalised members of our community have been systematically abused by those responsible for their care.
As long as there are institutions with the focus being on behaviour modification through deprivation and punishment this abuse is likely to continue and by consequence perpetuate the behaviour that is problematical.

There has been a vast number of documented and upheld complaints of abuse in homes for difficult children. Places such as the Epuni Boys Home, Whakapakari and other detention centres show how badly such ideas can go wrong. The recent media reports of Fight Clubs in prisons being another example.

“If the government is serious about addressing this issue then establishing therapeutic communities would be a beginning. Staffing these communities with psychotherapists and allied health care professionals who have done their own work in their own therapy would I think ensure that the vulnerable are protected from their caregivers and educators,” says McCartney.

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