Posts by Richard Aston
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Hard News: Perception and reality in the…, in reply to Lyndon Hood,
but has anyone sighted the actual Becroft letter about youth justice that Key tabled? I can’t shake the idea comments on different bits of the system are being confused in the reporting I saw.
Lyndon - I have asked for a copy of this letter but my understanding is that the PM did not have Judge Becroft's permission to table that letter.
It intrigues me because Judge Becroft has not been a supporter of boot camps in the past.
There are some good examples of wilderness camps working well in the US but they do not use the miltary style boot camp approach. Also NZ boot camps show reasonbly positive short term results but as Kim Workman and others have said the long term results are not at all positive.
Judge Becroft may be thinking of a strategy of combining boot camps with 12 months of mentoring post camp - this would have a much better success rate. -
He’d have been much safer opening a bar, basically.
Rick Bryant is a fine man who would have been much safer leaving New Zealand.
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Somewhere in this public perception of more prison for offenders is an assumption that prison sentences will change these offenders for the better. Or at least make them too scared to offend again. It is clearly just not true. Prison is a brutalizing place that institutionalizes people. It’s place that at its worst, breaks people or at least knocks the humanity out of them. They come out – oh yes everyone seems to forget they will come out one day – they come out fucked up and angry. They come out with less social skills than they went in with. Prisons simply create the next wave of offenders. It is such a dumb idea.
Punishment seems so embedded in our approach to many things but we have known for years now that it has very limited efficacy. Why are we still so wedded to punishment?
What ever happened to the Roper Report (1987) I can’t find a copy of it but from memory at the time it was suggesting a whole new approach to prisons, moving away from the punitive to the trans-formative, using prisons to change people. -
Graig - thanks
Fantastic line " Tell me, mother of the empty grave, how high is heaven?" -
@ James you nailed the vulnerable patch very well. The Jehovah Witness's work the same patch as did the Hare Krishnas in the seventies - just depends what happens after you get back up from rock bottom
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@ Idiot Savant
MSD (CYFS and FACS), Min Of Education ( private school funding) , Whanau Ora ( MSD)
Also I notice some of their branches have been de registered by the Charities Commission , notably : Dunedin, Gisborne, Porirua and Kaitaia . -
Destiny has helped people get out of the gutter, and men become fathers.
Yeah right - out of the gutter and into a "toxic ideological cult " to quote Morgan Godfery . I rather have the gutter.
Destiny Church members in some areas seem closely aligned with the Open Home Foundation a christian social services group that places kids in foster care, "good christian" foster care that is. There have been many reports of child abuse by Destiny foster carers , here, here and and here. -
Jonty, please tell us more about the puppet masters waiting in the wings.
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INCIS anyone?
Christopher , I was working at IBM when the INCIS nightmare was on - the general consensus was too many layers of decision makers – in the case of INCIS, Treasury and the various layers of Police. They didn’t seem to talk to each other, crossed over on decisions etc.
I wonder if that is the case here ? Poor quality or muddled decision making. -
Of several elephants in this particular room I suggest legal prescription drugs is the biggest. Lets start with ...
Ritalin - a stimulant, the wee cousin of P .
This article reveals " Data from NZ drug agency Pharmac showing 106,000 prescriptions for Ritalin for our children in 2010 . Just over 660 of those prescriptions were for preschoolers."
We are giving our preschoolers a form of speed! Quite aside from the side effects what sort of double message does this level of prescribing send to our kids? Hey kids we need to change your behavior so we are giving you some drugs to do that, oh but don't use drugs to change your behavior when you are older.
In my experience long term Ritalin use , just like speed, sucks the wairua out of kids. One of the saddest sights I have seen in my work with boys is a 10 yr old with a 6 year Ritalin habit ( legal) his eyes were hollow and blank, he behaved... but was lifeless.And don't get me talking about the misuse of antidepressants.