March 08, 2024
Boot camps whole new thing says Chhuor
Children’s Minister Karen Chhour says boot camp is the wrong name for what the new Government plans for young offenders.
She says the camps, which will start mid-year, are actually military style academies where Oranga Tamariki along with Defence, Police, Corrections, iwi and community organisations to create programmes for each individual young person.
“It’s not about sending these young people off to some kind of boot camp where they are going to be screamed in their faces. This is actually a serious rehabilitative programme for serious youth offenders that are out committing crimes over and over again in our community. We owe it to them to do everything we possibly can to give them the tools they need to turn their lives around,” Minister Chour says.
She says the programme is not like anything tried before.