US TAKES STEPS TO STAMP OUT BOOT CAMPS FOR JUVENILES

America's "boot camp" regimes for juvenile offenders - which provided
the model for the Thatcher government's ill-fated "short, sharp shock"
experiment in Britain in the 80s - are increasingly being closed down
as authorities unearth evidence that the get-tough regimes can create
more problems than they solve.

The latest scandal affecting a system that was once touted as the
answer to America's juvenile crime wave has come in Maryland, which
last week became the latest state to suspend the paramilitary regime
after an investigation revealed systematic bullying by guards and
cases of child abuse.

"The trust of the people of Maryland has been violated," said the
Democrat state governor, Parris Glendening, after a campaign organised
by the Baltimore Sun newspaper led a judge to remove 26 juveniles from
the camps to protect them from "patterns of abuse". Mr Glendening
ordered the remaining 79 Maryland youth offenders in the boot camps to
be removed and put in alternative programmes.

Boot camps enforce rapid obedience regimes on young offenders, making
detainees undergo a strict, often physically demanding, lifestyle with
severe punishments for those who fail to keep up.

In the US and other countries, politicians of the right have
championed such regimes as a way of showing their commitment to tough
law-and-order policies. Penal policy experts who have queried the
efficacy of such regimes have been routinely derided for giving
warnings that have all too often been vindicated.

The Maryland crisis follows similar revelations in some of the 52 boot
camps, which contain some 4,500 juvenile inmates, still in operation
in other parts of the US. In Georgia, where a former US marine
received national attention for pioneering the boot-camp philosophy,
the state has begun phasing out its five camps after the federal
department of justice found that the paramilitary boot camp model was
"not only ineffective but harmful".

In North Dakota, Colorado and Arizona, boot camp regimes have been
dropped. The states of California and Florida are also scaling back
their use of the system.

Doubts mounted after two high-profile deaths. In 1998 a 16-year-old
boy convicted of robbery died in an Arizona boot camp after being
punished for discipline violations. This year a 14-year-old girl
convicted for shoplifting in South Dakota died from heat exhaustion
after drill instructors concluded that she was faking illness during a
forced march.

Supporters of boot camps argue that the get-tough approach compels
young offenders to rethink the perils of a life of crime. A recent US
study by the Kansas-based Koch Crime Institute, however, found that
reoffending rates for juveniles from boot camps were similar to or
slightly higher than reoffending rates for juveniles sent to
traditional detention centres.

The Maryland crisis came to a head after the Baltimore Sun ran a
series of reports on life in the state's Garrett County boot camp,
which alleged that guards brutalised young inmates, knocking them to
the ground, gouging their faces and eyes and, in one case, breaking
bones.

"I wasn't surprised. I was appalled," says Bishop Robinson, who headed
a state inquiry for Mr Glendening after the allegations were
published. "I am very much concerned about the conduct of guards and
about the way this destroys the credibility of a programme that was
well intended."

Maryland's about-face is a setback for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the
state's deputy governor and eldest daughter of the assassinated
senator Robert Kennedy.

Ms Townsend is responsible for law and order, and her "tough love"
approach stirred speculation that she might be on the short-list of
vice-presidential nominees if Al Gore wins the Democratic nomination
for president next year.