Letters: Send parents on teen crim bootcamps too; tougher enforcement needed for dirt bike hoons

'Do the bootcamps - but without the post-camp backup, forget it.' Photo / NZME

Letters to the Editor

Try book camps instead

The past and present trouble with youth “bootcamps” is that while they often do a good job in getting their cohorts all temporarily bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the graduates are usually then released unsupported back into the dysfunctional social environments that got them into trouble in the first place.

Within a fortnight, many are back in the same old doom spiral. Some time back I managed an adult (over 16) literacy agency in the Far North - a hotbed of social issues if ever there was one.

While we certainly attempted to address literacy deficiencies, where practicable we tried to facilitate the younger ones into one of the armed services, usually the Army. Not to improve their martial arts, but simply because it was one of the few opportunities available for them to live more or less fulltime in a structured environment, with a roof over their head and three meals a day, learning a range of basic life (including literacy/numeracy) and trade skills with an income to boost self-esteem, and resulting work capabilities for life transferable to the wider community.

Do the camps - but without the post-camp backup, forget it. Maybe change the mindset and call them “book camps” instead.

Frank Greenall, Whanganui.

Send parents too

There has been a lot of criticism of the Government’s bootcamp programme with Opposition parties calling it a failure and the Government continuing to highlight its few successes. There is talk of the programme being revised to ensure that we get better outcomes.

One change that I would like to see occur is that when a teenager is selected to attend a bootcamp that their parents are also required to attend too.

While the parents are at the bootcamp, they could be provided with information on how to be better and more responsible parents while also learning employment skills which would enable them an easier path to securing employment.

Some of the jobs they could be trained to do might include being truant officers or security guards. This would result in better school attendances and reduction in crime such as shoplifting and ram-raiding.

Dick Ayres, Auckland CBD.

Start earlier

I totally agree with Jarrod Gilbert’s opinion re the problem with sending youth offenders to prison where they learn to continue to offend (NZ Herald, December 9).

But I have a great idea - set up a hub in every community, perhaps at the kindergarten or school. Staff it with Plunket, parent educators, public health nurses, addiction specialists, domestic violence service providers, social workers and anybody else that can help families to flourish. Expensive? Yes, but look how much we spend on the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff in so many ways.

From the time of conception, and before, families can be helped so that all children in New Zealand grow up to thrive.

Cathy Fraser, Devonport.

Dirt bike hoons

It is ridiculous that a very large group of dirt bike riders took to the streets in a part of Auckland last Sunday, many without helmets, doing wheelies, riding on the wrong side of the road, running red lights, and breaking other road rules, all the while being followed by police and the Eagle helicopter (NZ Herald, December 9).

While agreeing with Inspector Kerry Watson when he said, “We do not want to put the public at risk or put the riders at any more risk than they are putting themselves in”, surely there is more the police can do to stop this behaviour from happening.

It isn’t a new form of youth thumbing their nose at authority and showing off for their friends and family. The riders know very little will be done to stop them from hooning around and so they carry on.

Inspector Watson says, “We will do everything in our power to identify you and take enforcement action. That could include seizure or impounding of the bike.”

The enforcement action needs to be something the hoons would dread. A suggestion would be seizure and destruction of the bike. And that would need to be followed through, even if the rider wasn’t the owner.

Lorraine Kidd, Warkworth.

Ferry decision

Another victory for the lobby groups. How dare Labour consider upgrading the ports and purchasing modern ferries that could take trucks off the road and on to rail (NZ Herald, December 12).

These replacement ferries will cost more than the original ordered and nobody has yet even mentioned the enormous cancellation penalty to be paid to the Korean shipbuilders.

This is a win for the truck lobby an even better deal than the tobacco lobby, which only got tax relief on their deadly products. And of course the landlords’ lobby did gain a massive tax concession on their interest payments.

Wow, roll on the deal for the gun lobbyists.

Vince West, Milford.