I am pleased to see commitments made to proceed with wilderness camps. I think that many of us recognize that over the last 15 to 20 years in our society there has been a direct inverse relationship between the degree to which we have been willing to use deterrents and discipline in our society and the incidence of youth crime and violence
If your concern is about recidivism—and it should be—if your concern is about having young people that do not want to go and be incarcerated in a summer camp, then you should support the boot camp effort of that minister, and you should continue to realize that it should not be pleasant to be incarcerated.
Source:
In case that's unclear, he's advocating sending young offenders away to boot camps in the wilderness. That seemed like a good idea to Pallister and the Filmon government? Setting up prisoner camps for kids?
Pallister here comes out as an old-school advocate for hard-line punishment. A medieval approach to criminal justice that should remain in the dark ages. (And to be clear, when Pally and the rest of the Filmon government talk about these camps, they call them "boot camps," "tougher consequences," "a serious deterrent", etc.)
Because you know what happens when you're extra tough on young offenders? You teach them to fear and hate civil society and government authority. You set them up for a life of crime.
But I don't think tough-on-crime conservatives really care if these kinds of cruel and ineffective policies actually work. They believe in the moral value of threatened cruelty in and of itself, and are willing to ignore all the evidence about how totally pointless it is. That's what being "tough on crime" means. It's sure not about addressing the root causes of crime, or offering pathways to law-abiding existence.
And this attitude sure doesn't come out of "concern about recidivism," since cruel and unusual punishment only helps perpetuate the disempowerment and alienation that turn young people to crime in the first place.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!