Kids running wild at Bimberi?

Some time ago, my cousin’s 16 year old son in Texas was sent to a juvenile detention centre for his escapades into burglary. He did a year there in what was referred to as a “boot camp”. The boys were not given warm-inner glow rehabilitation. They were treated like Marine Corps recruits. They were up at 5am and given a full day of work and constant effort. It DID NOT hurt them. It taught them that crime has its price. After a year there, what did the kid do on release? He went back to school, brought his grades up and NEVER EVER reoffended.

I believe the South Americans have an effective way of dealing with problem street kids!

Noynoy said :

A staffing model utilising Youth Workers properly trained to Counsell, re-rehabilitate, educate and constructively occupy the detainees time would be a far more effective way of dealing with their current uprising.

It’s a great idea in theory, however in practice it seems neither well trained OR poorly trained youth workers last too long at Bimberi. They have a ridiculously high level of staff turnover there, meaning there are very few well trained staff members who have had the chance to build relationships with the kids there.

*source – good friend who is one of the few staff members who has lasted more than 18 months at the centre.

+1 Poor training of staff, too many people prepared to believe the worst. They are KIDS. CHILDREN. Yes they are in there because they have been feral but gee guys, dirt bag parents and a crap system = s&*(bag adults. Work out why it happens before we do the lock em up throw away the key mentality.

milkman # 12 I agree, at least they would have learnt something.

Not sure about those trades milkman. Perhaps something that wouldn’t involve saws and hammers (carpentry), bricks (obvious) or boiling water, knives or fat (cooking). How about giving them some fresh air while they clean up rubbish or providing labour for landscaping.

Get them busy doing useful physical labour 10-12 hours per day. Hard work that results in achievement is very therapeutic. Teach them carpentry, bricklaying, cooking, anything that requires physical labour and builds skills. Working together builds relationships and wears them out so they don’t have the time or energy to cause trouble. As an added benefit they develop work eithic and learn skills to help them when they get out.

Chain gangs. That’d keep them from being bored. Pandy Saudi Arabia is a bad example as their human rights record is a joke. Singapore is a better example (Michael Fay caned for grafitti). We used to get caned at school in the late 70’s and it sure gave us something to think about before playing up.

A good public whipping will get these boys back into civilisation. Works in Arabia hey?

johnboy said :

Failure to adequately staff? From the ACT Government?

I find that hard to believe.

It is hard to get funding for something like Juvenile detention these days, what with all the focus on cost recovery and revenue neutral business plans. Perhaps if we made them pay for their detention, take it out of their centrelink payment for the next sixty years. Or we could run a sweatshop making number-plates. Or lots of treadmill hooked into the grid, green power fetches a premium.

davesact said :

A staffing model utilising Youth Workers properly trained to Counsell, re-rehabilitate, educate and constructively occupy the detainees time would be a far more effective way of dealing with their current uprising.

Hard to “Counsell, re-rehabilitate, educate and constructively occupy the detainees” when they are beating you over the head with a chair. How do you think you get the little thugs to coopperate with all this “touchy feely” nonsense in the first place?

Counselling, the bloody universal panacea. Bollocks.