Oh no. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is going overboard. I see the Trust as fulfilling an important role by giving voice and support to victims and lobbying on their behalf. But this is draconian. The Sensible Sentencing Trust are promoting a return to compulsory Military training combined with the Tent City prisons and chain-gangs as a means of combating a rising violent crime rate and escalating prison population.
What on earth is to be gained from forcing all young men (and why not young women as they commit crime as well) to do compulsory military service? How dreadful. This ties in with my earlier post about how we swing from one extreme to another.
4 comments:
So - did you ever read Man Alone?
Tent "prisons" and "chain gangs" - oh and conscription too - for both offenders and for the unemployed were used very successfully in New Zealand as recently as the 1950s and from about the 1840s.
Times when crime was much lower than it is now, and employment, growth, and productivity much higher. In fact, both John Key and Rodney's recent policies on youth unemploymeny come pretty close to this.
Perhpas this time it's you who aren't being "sensible"
My comment was specifically about compulsory military training. In the absence of any clarification one has to assume they mean universal. I would never agree to this.
Compulsory military service? Isn't that a fancy name for slave?
As it happens the policy in question is not intended to apply to all youth, merely those that are unemployed and/or causing trouble. Those who are employed and keeping their noses clean will not have to do the CMT. In other words - no, it is not intended to be universal. A universal policy would never get enacted, employers for one would be against it. The version of CMT that is proposed would include trades type training along with the discipline, but weapons training etc could be easily excluded. The outcome would hopefully be that otherwise unoccupied youth would have an opportunity to learn some useful trades instead of getting further into crime.
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