Boot Camps: A Good Way to Deter Youth Offenders in Queensland?

In recent years, the Queensland Government along with other states in Australia have discarded the idea of using court-referred conferencing, instead choosing to follow other avenues for the rehabilitation of youth offenders. One of these avenues is the controversial use of boot camps. Within Queensland specifically, there has been a strong wave of both media and public support for the use of these camps, with much research being conducted to examine whether they are a useful avenue to follow. The use of boot camps has been controversial in many countries around the world, such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom and this paper will examine whether these controversial camps would be a good way to deter youth offenders within Queensland. With the introduction of the Youth Justice (Boot Camp Orders) 2012 Amendment bill it was hoped that the youth would have a real chance at rehabilitation and develop the skills to make good life choices (Carrington, Dwyer, Hutchinson & Richards, 2012). By using social control theory, it can be seen that if a youth offender is released from a boot camp, they will have to be entering back into a society where they will have four specific social bonds, attachment, commitment, involvement and belief that will keep them from reoffending (Agnew, 1985).

Boot camps first came about in the 1980’s as an alternative way to rehabilitate people with a mixture of both military and non-military aspects without incarcerating them in prison (Muscar, 2008). There are many promising non-military aspects of boot camps that help to rehabilitate a person and mentally prepare them for going back into their situations before the boot camp, such as the close relationships formed between the staff and inmat...

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