Healing won’t happen in a bootcamp

The government’s military-style bootcamp programme for young offenders begins tomorrow, with a pilot group of 10 teenagers.

It’s reported that Māori make up nine of the 10 teens, who are aged between 15 and 17. The young people are being sent to Oranga Tamariki’s Palmerston North youth justice facility for three months. The government says their residency will be followed by community support. 

Bootcamps for young offenders are not new in New Zealand. The first version of a three-month “short, sharp, shock” programme for young offenders took place in 1961. Since then, different governments have administered various forms of military-style bootcamps for youth, in the belief tough intervention will lead to reform. Extensive research on those efforts has shown no improvement in reoffending rates. 

The six-year Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, which released its final report this week, highlighted the abuse and harm caused by bootcamps run in the 1990s. Survivors have repeatedly stated that returning to that model is not the way forward. Still, this government and Children’s Minister Karen Chhour insist their boot-camps will be different.

Here, Teuila Fuatai speaks to Michael Blakely, who worked as chaplain at a military-style bootcamp in Tongariro in the late 1980s. He tells her why he believes bootcamps will never do young people any good.

 

I was in my early 40s when I worked as the chaplain at the Tongariro prison farm. The prison, which still exists today, is in the Tongariro National Park in the middle of nowhere, off the Desert Road.

It’s remote, isolated, and freezing cold a lot of the time.

When I started there, in the late 1980s, it was the middle of winter. I’d driven from Auckland in my old Bedford van, which conked out somewhere near Tokoroa because the carburettor had iced over. I remember using a spanner to break the ice so the engine could start again.

That long and icy drive seemed to foreshadow the harshness to come over the next three years.

I’d been encouraged to apply for the prison chaplain role by two leaders in the Anglican Church, Bishop Paul Reeves and Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe. They believed I was well-suited to chaplaincy, which often involved working with people on the fringes of society. Before then, I’d spent about 15 years working in parishes as a Catholic priest. I’d also been the chaplain at McCauley College, De La Salle College, and Hato Petera College in Auckland. I transferred to the Anglican Church in 1987 so I could get married and start a family.

As the Tongariro prison chaplain, I was an employee of the prison system which was run by what was then the Department of Justice. I was also employed by the National Council of Churches, an interfaith organisation representing different religious denominations, in the role.

The prison farm was for adult prisoners who were at the end of their sentences and about to be released. About three kilometres up the road was the Tongariro corrective training institution for youth offenders, known as Hautū. I was the chaplain for both these facilities.

At Hautū, the young lads were aged between 14 and 17, and were usually there for about three months. They were sent from all over the country and had a range of backgrounds. Some came from the South Island, others from way up north. From memory, about half of the boys were Māori, while the rest were Pākehā. As the padre or chaplain, I ran church services and provided pastoral care for prisoners and staff at both the adult and youth facilities. My wife at the time, and our five children, all made the move with me. A house in the staff village at the edge of Tūrangi was provided for us as part of my job.

Within my first week, I received a call about an incident from the prison superintendent. Two boys had got hold of some Brasso fluid, used for cleaning metal. They had filtered it through slices of bread before drinking it. Both boys were sick in hospital in Taumarunui and, as the padre, I visited them.

The first boy I saw was quite sick. The second one died while I was there. I administered last rites for him, then turned his body over to his parents when they arrived. He was Māori and from Northland, and his parents were just so sad. They were in total disbelief about their boy, and in deep shock. We said some karakia and prayed, but I just didn’t know what to think.

I was new to the job so I didn’t know the boys, and I was totally shocked at what had happened. I remember thinking there’d be some kind of investigation to find out what had led to this tragic incident — that the system would do what it needed to do, and I’d be contacted so that everything could be put on the record. But nothing happened. I never got interviewed by the police. And nothing ever came out in the media either. In fact, I never heard anything more about the situation.

It was a severe introduction to life at the prison.

Usually, my day would begin at the adult prison. I’d check with staff to see if there were any issues, and then take a prison vehicle up to the Hautū youth facility, where I’d do the same. We’d discuss any boys who were having problems, and try to deal with them. I didn’t know the specifics of why the boys ended up at the facility. Those things were rarely discussed.

Whatever had happened to the young lads, or whatever they’d done, the authorities believed it warranted prison. The whole mentality was that the boys were there to be punished, so they’d never commit crimes again. It was a kind of “shock treatment” approach that permeated all aspects of life at the institution.

The youth facility was arranged as a group of army huts in a quadrangle shape. At one end was the officers’ building, which looked out on the huts. This camp was situated right next to the pine forests and at high altitude — it’s the highest point of the Desert Road before you go down to Palmerston North. There was nothing nearby. Altogether, we’d have about 40 boys at a time living in the army huts, with three to four officers on duty during a weekday shift.

On weekends, when staff levels were lower, the boys often tried to run away.

Every Monday morning, my first visit was to the confinement area, which had a separate yard and cells, to see if any lads were there. That’s where they put the lads who’d tried to run away.

I’d find kids with broken eye sockets, broken noses, teeth missing and dog bites on their legs. The officers had Alsatian dogs which they released to capture anyone who tried to escape.

I remember one lad I found in the confinement area in the middle of winter. He was sitting in a corner of the open yard and had literally turned purple and blue in colour. It was so cold that the internal prison sprinkler systems were down because they’d frozen solid. I didn’t know what this boy had done but his teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I asked him: “Why don’t you go into your cell for shelter?” He said: “Padre, I can’t go in there. My mattress is absolutely soaking wet because it rained all night and my cell is an open cell. I can’t lie on the mattress because it’s soaking wet, and there are no blankets.”

I knew I had to do something. I got him to write a letter to the superintendent of the prison, but it never got anywhere. The boy told me it was ripped up in front of him by one of the prison officers. I also tried to intercede with fellow staff, but came up against the prevailing attitude of the place: “These boys are here to be given a harsh lesson so that they’ll never, ever commit a crime again.”

I experienced that mentality repeatedly during my three years as prison chaplain, especially when I tried to push against it.

As part of the prison’s remit, the boys were supposed to take part in an education programme. When I arrived, very little was happening, so my then wife and I arranged for her to get a contract to help out. My wife was Māori and she provided a bit of education, and also taught the boys popular waiata and hīmene. She wrote the songs on large sheets of butcher paper and put them up for everyone to see. She also spent a lot of time with the younger boys, teaching them songs and karakia, and praying with them.

As the chaplain, I developed a programme for the boys based on work that the prison’s former psychologist had been doing. The programme was about managing relationships, and how to interact with others without conflict. With the boys, we focused on what that meant in their immediate environment. For instance, how to develop a relationship with a prison officer or fellow prisoner and not end up in a fight.

From talking to the boys, I knew that if they weren’t arguing with one another, they were arguing with prison officers. The staff often didn’t have the insight to understand what was really going on, and they’d often react with force. “Thump therapy” was something you didn’t talk about, but which quietly went on.

Everyone knew boys were beaten by staff, and I’d often see black eyes and bruises.

It was all part of the thinking that the facility should provide corrective training. It was a disastrous situation for everybody. And some officers were particularly nasty.

I remember one man who’d been a butcher in Tūrangi. I wasn’t sure what qualifications or experience you needed to be a prison officer, but he applied for a job, and got it. He was brutal. At one stage, I commented that he would have been better sticking to butchery rather than butchering the youth. He was very harsh, verbally and physically, and really seemed to believe that he had to teach the boys a lesson.

Both my wife and I tried our best to work kindly and constructively with the young lads in that environment. We brought aspects of te ao Māori into our work. As part of the education programme we set up together, I taught them about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and tried to develop their understanding of nature and the sacredness of all life forms. We knew these things were particularly important for Māori youth coming through the institution. More than that, the lads often responded positively.

At the end of one programme course, one of the boys said to me: “Padre, if I’d been taught this in school, I’d never have ended up here.”

He was one of the few who talked to me about himself. He was Pākehā, from either Timaru or Ōamaru, I can’t remember. He’d just finished school and got himself into trouble. Through the programme, he developed a bit of insight into his own behaviour and reactions. His comment made me feel that we were doing something right, a pretty rare feeling working inside that system.

The prison setup wasn’t, under any circumstances, a place that encouraged us to speak up. In fact, my experience showed it was best to try and conform.

Sometime in my first year there, I wrote a letter to Geoffrey Palmer, the minister in charge of prisons at the time. The letter described the violence at the institute, how the kids were demeaned, and the fact that those in charge created an entirely monocultural environment.

The prison staff were against having Māori members of staff or incorporating aspects of te ao Māori into the prison programmes. My wife experienced a lot of racism. They made it very uncomfortable for her at work. One day, for example, we found her waiata sheets tossed in the burner where all the rubbish went. We also got threatening notes in our letterbox which said things like: “What a pity you’ve got such lovely children.”

At one point, two young Maōri officers were appointed, the first Māori prison staff to work there. About a week or so after they started, I was at the court in Taupō supporting a partner of one of the adult prisoners, when these two Maōri officers also appeared. They’d been accused by the prison of physically striking some of the boys. I knew violence was common among staff, so it was clear these officers had been singled out because they were Māori. They were found guilty and immediately dismissed by the prison.

After sending my letter to Geoffrey Palmer, I got a visit from the Department of Justice senior prison chaplain who worked in Wellington. He informed me that I’d committed a terrible offence, because as a public servant, I was forbidden to write to a member of parliament. He said I needed to resign.

I refused, and ended up contacting the Office of Race Relations. I learned later that my letter never made it to the minister’s office. It was intercepted and sent instead to the head office of the Prison Service in Wellington.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get anywhere with the Office of Race Relations either. The then Race Relations conciliator travelled from Auckland to Tongariro to meet me, but the meeting took place in the presence of the prison superintendent. The power imbalance meant I couldn’t say much.

Even among the collective of prison chaplains, there wasn’t any appetite to address what was wrong. One year, I attended the annual national conference of the prison chaplains in Wellington. When I raised the problems I’d observed at Tongariro, the feedback basically was: “This conference is paid for by the system and we don’t want to say anything that would reflect badly on the system.

The comment was even made that, compared to what used to happen at youth facilities and borstals “back in the day”, the behaviour at the corrective training institution was nothing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my contract wasn’t renewed when I reapplied at the end of my three-year tenure as chaplain. Despite everything, I wanted to stay at Tongariro because there was still so much work to do.

I know different governments and agencies have been told again and again of observations like mine.

My own experiences were eventually reported to the Royal Commission on Social Policy. That royal commission was set up under the Lange government in 1986 to examine social conditions and come up with policies that would result in a more just and fair society. I also spoke to the Ministerial Committee of Inquiry into the Prisons System, which was set up in 1987. That committee, chaired by Sir Clinton Roper, published its findings and recommendations in the 1989 report Te Ara Hou: The New Way, which recommended significant changes for the entire justice sector, from the courts to the probation system and prisons.

Sadly, after all these years and inquiries, reports and investigations, it seems we’re still holding on to the same mentality which justified the fundamentally flawed and inhumane approach I was part of at Tongariro.

When you strip it all back, the problem starts with the authorities believing that the behaviour, and life, of a teenage male can be fixed through harsh punishment.

It’s a simplistic approach to working with young people who offend, and it just doesn’t work. The belief is that a bloody good hiding will fix them. We’ve seen a version of that approach applied to ram raids and the need to harshly punish those responsible with prison time.

I understand that victims feel angry and violated, but imposing more and more severe punishments doesn’t solve anything. From my experience, I can tell you that you can beat the lads and freeze them half to death, and they won’t be fixed. They’ll reoffend.

Places like bootcamps, corrective training facilities and prisons are effectively the military arm of the state. And it’s impossible for them to be anything other than that.

I’ve seen young people come into the system and be severely damaged by the very place supposed to help them. We need to see that for what it is. We must admit that truth for our young people, even when their behaviour challenges us to our very core.

I’m 84 years old now, and I’ve never forgotten the brutality I witnessed at the corrective training institute in Tongariro. I never learned what happened to the different boys after they left. But I can only imagine the lifelong trauma and harm it caused the young lads who were forced to stay there. I didn’t see anyone come out better off. Not one.

Even back then, authorities knew that and still they persisted.

A big study commissioned by the Department of Justice in 1983 showed the young people coming out of corrective training facilities were no better off than before they went in. It found just over 70 percent of trainees reoffended within a year of being released.

Sadly, just like in today’s system, Māori were overrepresented. At the time of the study, Māori made up nearly half of trainees, 100 out of 214, at corrective training institutes. When researchers looked at just the North Island facilities, 90 percent of trainees were Māori.

I’m deeply concerned at how familiar that all sounds to today’s so-called solutions for our young people in trouble,

In corrective training institutions, there was no room for compassion, for being able to see the offenders as teenagers, or even people. They were there to be punished, so they were given orders, and barked at as if they were little soldiers.

We must find a way to heal and raise up our young people who are causing harm to others. It’s the only way to stem the destruction and hurt that flows from young offenders into our society.

That healing simply isn’t going to happen through a bootcamp, or prison, or corrective training facility. I’ve seen first-hand the evil that happens in those places and the damage it causes, both to those forced to stay there and those who work within their walls. Now more than ever, we need to look to community solutions which have iwi, churches and families at their heart.

 

Michael Blakely grew up in the Central Otago town of Kokonga in the Ranfurly district. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1971, before transferring to the Anglican Church in 1987. Michael has worked as a chaplain and health rights’ advocate around the country, including in the Bay of Plenty, Wanganui and Auckland. He was also a social worker for the Department of Child, Youth and Family services in the 1990s. Before retiring in 2023, Michael was a chaplain at Waitākere Hospital and the Mason Clinic for forensic psychiatry services in Auckland. In all his work, he’s been driven by a belief in balance in relationships and society, and that those who’ve wronged others can be helped to understand the harm they’ve caused, and to repent, seek forgiveness, and ultimately heal in their own way.

As told to Teuila Fuatai. Made possible by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.