ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512180033
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Kids and Crime
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
``YOU CAN'T TAKE A KID from a bad neighborhood and a rotten family, put him in a boot camp for three months, and then send him back to that same community and expect him to be any better,'' a law professor says.
About four of every 10 young criminals sent to boot camp in Virginia either fail to complete the program or commit new crimes after they graduate.
Twenty-five percent of the nonviolent offenders who entered the Southampton Intensive Treatment Center between 1991 and last year were terminated for disciplinary or medical reasons. Of the young men who made it through the program, 27 percent have since been convicted of a felony or had their probation revoked.
Despite those figures, a 1994 study by the Department of Corrections concluded that the boot camp is "working well for a selected number of offenders who would probably have continued an increasingly serious life of crime."
Gov. George Allen's Commission on Juvenile Justice Reform wants to make boot camps available to more offenders at younger ages.
Although boot camps may be successful with a captive audience, critics say, the discipline they instill is often replaced by the rules of the streets once offenders return home.
"You can't take a kid from a bad neighborhood and a rotten family, put him in a boot camp for three months, and then send him back to that same community and expect him to be any better," said Robert Shepherd, a law professor at the University of Richmond. Shepherd serves on a Commission on Youth task force that has often been at odds with the governor's panel.
National studies have raised questions about the effectiveness of boot camps, consistently finding that graduates of the programs commit new crimes at only a slightly lower rate than similar offenders who are sent to prison.
In some states, including Louisiana and Georgia, studies have found that boot camp participants are actually being arrested more often than people paroled from prison
But the concept remains popular among politicians looking for the right mixture of retribution and rehabilitation.
"It's got all of the components in one nice little sound bite," said Linda Nablo, senior policy analyst for the Action Alliance for Virginia's Children and Youth, a bipartisan group that is monitoring the juvenile justice issue.
"It's an easy answer to assume that if we make them march and shave their heads, then somehow they're going to suddenly grow up and become responsible," Nablo said.
"Bull. It may work for a few, but there is no one program model that is the simple answer."
After completing boot camp, offenders are monitored by probation officers who encourage them to find jobs and stay out of trouble.
The percentage of boot camp graduates in Virginia who return to crime has increased from 15 percent in 1992 to 27 percent last year, indicating that the longer offenders are out of the program, the greater the chances of recidivism.
But instead of focusing on the 27 percent recidivism rate, boot camp manager Dennis Burgess prefers to stress the positive - that 73 percent of the graduates have stayed out of trouble.
"Everybody would probably like to see a 100 percent success rate, but I don't think that's reasonable any time you're dealing with human behavior," Burgess said.
"Trying to change someone's morals and values is a tough assignment, especially in 90 days."
The governor's Commission on Juvenile Justice Reform, in preliminary recommendations made in October, called for the creation of regional boot camps where judges can send juveniles in lieu of committing them to the Department of Youth and Family Services. Unlike the current system, offenders could be sent to boot camp against their will.
The commission is also recommending boot camps for nonviolent juveniles tried as adults, and suggests that other boot camps be operated by the state youth department, which would have the authority to select participants among the juveniles who receive state commitments.
Of 52 juvenile court judges surveyed by The Roanoke Times, 83 percent favored the idea of having boot camps as a sentencing option. Currently, only circuit court judges can send offenders to boot camp.
Although there is debate over how well boot camps work, they clearly are less expensive than prison.
Putting one person through three months of boot camp costs about $9,000. By comparison, it would cost about $16,000 to keep the same person in prison for a year. On average, young men are sent to boot camp in lieu of a 10-year prison sentence.
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: chart & graphs - Facts about Virginia's boot camp.by CNBcolor STAFF