MUST BE A BETTER WAY

UNDOUBTEDLY, “There Is A Better Way”, (Michael Barry Henderson WP, 2/10) than current efforts to rehabilitate troubled, recidivist youths and reveal to them a self-satisfying life devoid of drugs, stealing, bashing, trashing and terrorising.

The model is there for those with the political and moral courage to reintroduce and support it.

The Petford Training Camp was established in 1978 and then closed in mysterious circumstances in 1999 when Peter Beattie was premier of Queensland.

Essentially, this renowned and highly successful model is based on the premise of “tough love”, where consequences for misbehaviour are unfailingly applied in a humanising manner. Courses ran for 3-6 months, depending on individual needs.

However, there is a serious, and apparently intractable problem, for any program of this kind.

The model is doomed to defeat because in the contemporary judicial world penalties for youth anti-social, miscreant behaviour are rarely enforced, and if they are their deterrent value is zero.

Indeed, being an ex-inmate of “Juvie” is regarded as a badge of distinction among juvenile delinquents.

Therefore, cognitive therapy offered by sincere and hardworking “child psychologists, youth workers, family therapists, and Indigenous support groups” aimed at linking life choices to behaviour and thus to consequences is highly unlikely to succeed.

The model is sound but the operational context is flawed.

Weak and generally non-enforced penalties only embolden perpetrators, who scoff at the system.

In reality, these cosmetic consequences evoke hilarity and ferment a cavalier disrespect and contempt for the law, the police, the judiciary and society in general.

Ray Perry, White Rock