It is said that des­per­ate times re­quire des­per­ate mea­sures, but I has­ten to add that in spite of our des­per­a­tion to fix the prob­lem of school vi­o­lence, I im­plore se­ri­ous thought to do­ing so through boot camps.

This is not an at­tempt to dis­cred­it the ef­fi­ca­cy of boot camps, but these mea­sures some­times have the op­po­site ef­fect to what is re­quired or in­tend­ed. Boot camps are rigid mil­i­tary-type pro­grammes which were ini­tial­ly set up to pro­vide ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers with an al­ter­na­tive to prison, the ob­jec­tive be­ing to give them a "wake-up call", hop­ing that their neg­a­tive be­hav­iours would change. How­ev­er, these camps are al­so known to re­in­force cer­tain rad­i­cal at­ti­tudes that can thrive with such mil­i­tant dis­ci­pline and train­ing.

Over the years many ver­sions of boot camp have emerged par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States, some of them of­fer­ing more ther­a­peu­tic type pro­grammes than the orig­i­nal dis­pen­sa­tion. How­ev­er, it must be not­ed that boot camps were banned in Flori­da in 2006, fol­low­ing the death of a 14-year-old, who col­lapsed un­der stress of a phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in which he was forced to con­tin­ue, de­spite his protes­ta­tions of feel­ing un­well. It has al­so been re­port­ed that in some of these camps, in­mates are beat­en to con­form to cer­tain prac­tices.

I am pos­i­tive­ly sure that should our gov­ern­ment agree to the es­tab­lish­ment of boot camps, they will do so af­ter ex­ten­sive re­search in­to the pros and cons of this ap­proach. How­ev­er, I must in­sist that boot camp is not the panacea for our present prob­lems. Delin­quen­cy is not an event but a process that has its roots in child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences, en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors and par­ent­ing styles. What­ev­er we de­ter­mine as a method, must in­clude a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of the in­di­vid­u­als pre­sent­ing with the be­hav­iour, and this will re­veal that we need more per­son­alised ap­proach­es to this sit­u­a­tion. One size can­not fit all.

What these as­sess­ments will al­so re­veal is that there are re­al deep-seat­ed is­sues in the homes and fam­i­lies of our delin­quent youths, stem­ming from psy­choso­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions that gen­er­ate rage, anger and pain in their lives, with school be­ing the on­ly place avail­able to vent. So we have the bul­ly­ing, fight­ing and oth­er neg­a­tive dys­func­tion­al be­hav­iours, which make our schools volatile and un­safe. Please note that many of our hurt­ing chil­dren don't act out, but in­stead are in­tro­vert­ed, bot­tling up their pain and which can ex­plode at any time in some­times bizarre ways, for ex­am­ple sui­cide.

Rather than boot camps, we should es­tab­lish ther­a­peu­tic com­mu­ni­ties where we can as­sist our trou­bled youths to (re) learn the art of liv­ing with­in a fam­i­ly struc­ture that is trust­ing, car­ing and nur­tur­ing and aimed at be­hav­iour mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Ther­a­peu­tic com­mu­ni­ties have been used suc­cess­ful­ly in many coun­tries across the world in the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of pris­on­ers, drug ad­dicts, in­clud­ing ado­les­cent drug users and psy­chi­atric pa­tients. In­stead of mil­i­tary au­thor­i­ty fig­ures, these com­mu­ni­ties are man­aged by per­sons who take the place of par­ents, big broth­ers/sis­ters and men­tors.

Fur­ther, I make the case for con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment. Not mere­ly aca­d­e­m­ic con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment, but psy­choso­cial as­sess­ments from pre-school to uni­ver­si­ty. This gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to flag the trou­bled stu­dents well be­fore they morph in­to un­con­trol­lable, un­reach­able chil­dren that even­tu­al­ly be­come our delin­quents. These as­sess­ments must be done with the in­volve­ment of the fam­i­lies, so that par­ent­ing de­fi­cien­cies can be recog­nised and dealt with in a cor­rec­tive man­ner so that ac­cept­able nur­tur­ing is in place for our chil­dren. Con­sid­er­ing that our chil­dren are the fu­ture, we should not hes­i­tate to in­vest our re­sources in meth­ods that are proac­tive and which would re­dound to their pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment. Think about it.

Garvin Cole

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