Are teen boot camps the answer? - punishment of juvenile offenders

Current Events, Sept 26, 1994

"It changed me completely around," says 17-year-old Roy about the Manatee County boot camp in Palmetto, Fla.

A high school dropout at 14, Roy got into drug dealing and made a living out of it until he was arrested three years later for attempted robbery.

The judge sentenced him to the Manatee County boot camp--one of seven military-style prison centers around the country for youths convicted of violent crimes. These new youth boot camps are modeled after adult boot camp prisons. At Manatee, Roy and other teens live a tough, no-nonsense military-style life.

Roy and the other teens at Manatee rise at 5 a.m. for several hours of running and other physical exercise, spend the afternoon in the classroom, and have lights out by 9 p.m. There's no TV and no radio.

No profanity is allowed at Manatee, and rule-breakers must do extra push ups or write essays about what they did wrong.

As a result of his time at Manatee, Roy has sworn not to return to the drug scene and to leave crime behind.

But will he?

The record of adult boot camps is not good. Statistics show that young men who go through adult boot camp are just as likely to commit new offenses as are regular prison inmates, says Doris Layton Mackenzie, a University of Maryland researcher who has studied several boot camps for the Department of Justice.

At least 30 states and ten cities have boot camp programs for adults, and more are considering or planning to build them.

Youth boot camps, such as Manatee, however, may be more successful than adult boot camps. Since Manatee boot camp opened last year, only one youth out of 59 graduates has been arrested.

Experts say it will take longer to really find out how successful youth boot camps are. This is because the longer a released prisoner is out on the street, the more likely he or she is to return to a life of crime.

"Boot camps are so popular because it's perceived that we're finally doing something with these kids--not just putting them in a touch-feely halfway house," says Neil Kaltenecker, who runs Florida's juvenile boot camps.

Kaltenecker hopes that boot camps are the answer to holding down youth crime.