Boot camps

The disciplines of a healthy society are embodied in learnt individual selfdiscipline. Once the ‘‘parents’’ and institutions have deviated from this discipline, the culture collapses. Exposing youthful criminals to boot camps is inappropriate. Successful military training regimes require candidate selection with aptitudes suitable for the task in hand.

This form of training is appropriate only when aimed at protecting citizens against security threats from belligerent regimes. State sponsored murder can be tolerated only for survival against evil foreign aggression. It is not a routine method of education.

Those politicians now proposing ‘‘boot camps’’ have never served their country in this manner. They clutch at straws.

Then there is the matter of judicial activism. It is the job of judges and justices to interpret evidence in the context of the intention of the law. Where they find fault with the wording of legislation, they should advise parliament separately, but should not disrupt the dispensing of justice where the intention of the law is understood. If the letter of the law were the main consideration, we would not need judges: The evidence could be examined and determined by technology. Judgment would then be completely ‘‘out the window.’’ The finding in the Ellis case was such a judicial exception.

Hugh Webb, Hamilton