The re-offending rate - 53 percent - after completion of boot camp is not looking promising and will probably worsen yet. The fact that it is still "early days" is not a positive mitigating factor. It is a negative. Here is Corrections description of re-imprisonment rates and ethnic breakdown;
The re-imprisonment rate over 48 months for Maori offenders (55%) is considerably higher than the rate for both NZ Europeans (45%) and Pacific offenders (36%). This difference is likely to be a reflection of a number of variables. Maori offenders as a group tend on average to be younger than Europeans (see Appendix 1). Maori are also more likely to be serving time for offences which have base-rates, especially dishonesty offences (burglary, car conversion, theft, etc) 4. Pacific offenders on the other hand tend to be in prison for offences which have relatively low base rates (violence and sexual offences). Although the high re-imprisonment rate for Maori undoubtedly contributes to the disproportionate number of Maori in prison, its impact is likely to be considerably less than that of the very large numbers of young Maori entering the criminal justice system for the first time each year.
Without knowing anything specific about the small sample that has undergone boot camp 'rehab' there is a reasonable question to be posed. Does it increase the risk of re-offending?
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2 comments:
I'd want to know whether it was the hard cases (ex ante more likely to reoffend) that were sent to boot camp. We'd then want to know recidivism rates for that type before drawing conclusions. (I'm not a fan of boot camps in general - but this is what we'd need to know to draw conclusions).
Boot camps have been around intermittently for a number of years. They are quite effective in giving participants a purpose to for example just to get up in the morning. The son of a work colleague in the 90's went through a camp. The change in the young man was remarkable.
But when he could not find a job, he slipped into his old ways.
The key is what happens after the camp
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