JUVENILE BOOT CAMPS ARE SEEN AS FAILURES

CRIME: Some States Have Shut Down Or Cut Back These
Programs.

Five years ago,responding to an increase in serious juvenile crime,the
state of Maryland initiated one of the nation's largest boot-camp
programs for teen-age criminals.

The program, called the Leadership Challenge, quickly became the model
for other states. But more than a week ago, after reviewing a task
force report that documented instances of physical abuse at their
camps, Maryland officials appeared on the verge of conceding that he
current initiative was a failure.

The Maryland experience, together with problems in other states, has
already led some states to close their boot camps and even to rethink
how their penal laws treat young offenders. All in all, it is a
remarkable turn of events for an idea that was once greeted as a
breakthrough in the fight against juvenile crime.

There is increasing evidence that boot camps never worked. A national
study last year by the Koch Crime Institute, a public-policy group in
Topeka, Kan., showed that recidivism among boot-camp attendees ranged
from 64 percent to 75 percent, slightly higher than for youths
sentenced to adult prisons.

Gerald Wells, a senior research associate at the Koch Institute, said
of the report, "The shocking parts are the more alarming parts are the
failures."

Research has also shown, according to Wells and other penal-justice
experts, that these camps were grounded in a false and unexamined assumption.

"People thought boot camps shaped up a lot of servicemen during three
wars,"Wells said. "But just because you place someone in a highly
structured environment with discipline does not mean once they get
home, and are out of that, they will be model citizens."

Boot camps have their roots in the 1970s, with the advent of large,
well-organized and extremely violent street gangs.

By the 1990s, as the number of repeat juvenile offenders rose to
record levels, it became clear that prison sentences were not working.
In 1994, nearly 10,000 juveniles were charged with criminal offenses,
an all-time high.

More than 2,300 of them were charged with murder, compared with fewer
than 1,000 in 1980, according to the Justice Department's Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. On any given day, about
105,000 children were in custody on criminal charges in the United
States.

It was in this atmosphere that Maryland Lt. Gove. Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend began exploring the potential of boot camps.

Shortly after being elected with Gove. Parris Glendening in 1994,
Townsend, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton
administration, said she considered boot camps "a cost-effective,
intermediate punishment" and included them among her priorities.

Townsend has said the idea came from visiting a juvenile boot camp in
Ohio. By then, a few states, including Georgia, Louisiana, West
Virginia and Ohio, had begun well-publicized, promising experiments
with juvenile camps.

The camps, modeled after similar programs that popped up in England in
the 1970s, were designed for juveniles who had committed moderately
serious crimes, such as auto theft, with the goal of interceding
before they moved to more serious crimes.

By 1997, more than 27,000 teen-agers were passing through 54 camps in
23 states annually.

The people who ran the real boot camps were quite skeptical. "The key
reason we are successful is that we have a clientele down here that
chose to be here on their own," said Sgt. Maj. Ford Kensley, who
oversees drill instructors at the U.S. Marine Corps' recruitment base
in Parris Island, S.C. "They are not here because a judge said you
should go here. Our population comes with a lot more positive attitudes."

He said that when "a kid graduates from Parris Island, he is just
beginning a four-or five-year enlistment in the Marine Corps. It is
not like they spend 11 months here, and we just throw them out onto
the streets."

On Dec. 15, a Maryland special task force released a report that
accused guards of routine and brutal beatings of inmates, and
Glendening and Townsend suspended the state's camps and dismissed the
top five juvenile-justice officials.

Similar accusations have led state and local officials in Colorado,
North Dakota and Arizona to drop their programs, while Florida and
California are scaling back theirs.

Still, some believe the programs, in some form, can be
useful.

"These are tough kids with tough problems. They need good education
and drug treatment, and they also need to learn respect, self-respect,
discipline and a new way of conducting themselves in society,"
Townsend said. "Facilities that provide structure and discipline can
be run effectively and have a role in our fight after juvenile crime."

Many experts disagree, citing the expense of running such programs
properly.

"It's a budget issue," said Doris Mackenzie, a University of Maryland
criminology professor. "They are popular in the public. People feel we
should treat these kids tough, and everyone can get onto the
bandwagon," she said. "But when it comes to this extra expense of
doing the follow-up, we find, the money is not there."

In any case, juvenile crime has been falling since 1994, after an
overall drop in the nation's juvenile population. This will make it
highly unlikely, say political observers, that voters will agree to
pay for individualized rehabilitation. Much more likely, they say, is
that the 27,000 young people who once went to boot camp each year will
instead be sent to prison.

As bed as boot camps have proven to be, Wells added, "once you start
incarcerating kids, you have lost. But unfortunately, that is where we
seem headed."