HEAT TURNED UP ON JUVENILE BOOT CAMPS

Reports Of Abuse: Maryland Accusations, Firings Follow Questions, Scrutiny
Of Similar Programs Across U.S.

BALTIMORE -- In the face of a looming scandal, Maryland shut down its once
ballyhooed boot camp regimen for juvenile offenders last week, providing
further evidence of grave second thoughts across the nation about the "get
tough" camps favored by politicians during the last decade.

After an emergency investigation concluded that there was a pattern of
guards punishing teenage inmates with roughhouse abuses, Gov. Parris
Glendening suspended the paramilitary methods and trappings at the state's
three camps and removed his top five justice executives. At the same time,
14 of the quasi-drill-sergeant camp guards were suspended as criminal and
civil rights investigations began. One guard has already been charged with
child abuse.

"The trust of the people of Maryland has been violated," the governor
declared as the scandal, spurred by a series of articles in the Baltimore
Sun, reached crisis proportions with a Baltimore judge intervening to remove
26 juveniles from the camps and expressing "grave concern" at the teenage
offenders' many complaints about abusive guards.

The boot camp approach to juvenile criminals, based on enforcing rugged
military-obedience techniques of verbal and physical regimentation, has been
adopted in recent years in many states frustrated by youth crime. But lately
some of the 52 boot camps housing 4,500 juveniles across the country are
being scrutinized because of instances of excessive force and, even more,
because of mounting research findings that the camps, for all their attempts
at rigid discipline, offer no improvement on traditional detention methods.

Boot Camps Closing

In Georgia, where a former Marine received national attention in pioneering
the boot camp approach, the state decided this month to begin phasing out
its five boot camps after a stinging conclusion by the U.S. Justice
Department that "the paramilitary boot camp model is not only ineffective,
but harmful" to juvenile offenders. Colorado, North Dakota and Arizona have
also dropped their programs, while Florida and California are scaling theirs
back.

Official doubts have been growing in the face of some notorious examples of
abuses. In South Dakota, Gina Score, a 14-year-old convicted of shoplifting,
died from heat exhaustion after her drill instructors concluded that she was
faking illness during a forced march. Last year, Nicholaus Contreraz of
Sacramento, a 16-year-old convicted of robbery, died in an Arizona boot camp
after being punished for discipline violations.

"The boot camps are just the crisis of the day," said Jann Jackson,
executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth, a private justice
agency, who served here on the governor's emergency investigation of the
camps. "It reflects far deeper systemic problems in a justice system that
has been failing kids for years from the moment of intake to after-care."

Various juvenile justice and welfare advocates said in interviews that
Maryland officials had received repeated earlier warnings of widespread
problems in youth detention centers but had ignored them until the Sun
reported a pattern of abuses by boot camp guards and pressed political
leaders for reaction.

Week Of Accusations

Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is charged with
overseeing the criminal justice system, announced the firings Thursday after
a week of front-page accusations that teenagers were struck and gratuitously
humiliated by overzealous guards in the three years of the program.

"The boot camp is a model that lends itself to abuses," said Jim McComb,
chair of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition, a group of professional
specialists that was warning of problems long before the current scandal.
There is no evidence that the camps do any good, McComb said.

"Why take the risk of abusing children to defend the camps?" he asked after
Glendening asserted that, despite current problems, a way might yet be found
to make the boot camp an effective tool.

Various members of the coalition opposed to boot camps expressed concern
that the Glendening administration would retain a "get tough" philosophy to
protect itself politically, while leaving unsolved large and expensive
problems, like crowding, throughout the juvenile system.

"The answers go far beyond firing five people," said Vincent Schiraldi,
executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. For all
the news media attention to the boot camps, Schiraldi said, state officials
have long been warned about less dramatic problems at the Cheltenham
detention center, where, he said, 100 detainees were sleeping crowded into a
day room designed for recreation by 26 people.

In a national study of recidivism this year by the Koch Crime Institute, a
research organization in Topeka, Kan., the rates for juveniles from boot
camps ranged from 64 percent to 75 percent, while the rates for those from
traditional detention centers were 63 percent to 71 percent.

"We were aware of the boot camp problem and terminated seven of the guards
even before this brouhaha," said Jack Nadol, Maryland's deputy secretary of
juvenile justice, who refused to resign and was fired by the governor. "I
think the articles sensationalized the problem and didn't show the kids who
have gone on to college or the military."