THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240273
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: 81 lines
It was mid-morning Monday before the first hint of a smile escaped the face of one of the eight teen-age ``recruits'' in the first wave in the Virginia Juvenile Boot Camp's new girls' program.
This is not a jolly place. It's not meant to be.
The smile came in an English class on the program's first full day. It was a small smile, quickly withdrawn, made when the teacher cracked a joke about his bald spot. He was reviewing compositions written by three of the girls, ages 15 to 17, sent here by juvenile-court judges around the state, and including one girl from South Hampton Roads. This is, after all, a school, too.
But first and foremost, this is a correctional facility - witness the 15-foot, chain-link fences topped by coiled razor wire and the padlocks at all gates, inside and outside the compound - and a rehabilitative facility. There's intensive individual and group counseling, and there's the strict military discipline that gives the camp its name. The girls' camp is the only one in Virginia; camp officials know of only one other in the country for teen-age girls, in Florida.
The girl's smile, fleeting as it was, came at 9:21 a.m. That was after more than three hours of work supervised by stern retired military drill instructors in black sweat suits and T-shirts. The girls started before dawn, sweeping and straightening their white, oval-shaped, rigid-canvas barracks - dubbed The Igloo by the camp staff - followed by marching, calisthenics and exercise, jogging in cadence around a one-fifth-mile track, more marching, more cleaning and laundry, more marching, breakfast eaten while sitting erect and silent, and more marching.
They ran everywhere they didn't march. The first and last words out of each girl's mouth was a loud ``ma'am'' or ``sir,'' as in: ``Ma'am! Yes, ma'am!'' ``Sir! Excuse me, sir!''
When they stood, it was at attention. They folded their gray sweat suits, green camouflage uniforms and even underwear, following printed directions, measuring the creases and laying the clothes carefully into blue wooden footlockers where even the soap and shampoo were lined up precisely. They recited the camp ``norms,'' or rules.
Eventually, camp commander Jack M. Scott - a retired 26-year veteran Army sergeant - expects to have 20 girls in camp, sharing the semicircle of plain-wood bunks covered with olive-drab blankets in one end of The Igloo. They're segregated from the 48 boys in camp by living and taking classes in their barracks; following a strict schedule, they use the same exercise field, mess hall and computer lab at separate times.
The boot camp, also called Camp Washington, opened in January just south of Windsor as an optional juvenile-detention facility, with the hope that harsh discipline over five months, followed by another six months of probation and counseling, would deter nonviolent, first-time offenders from further crime.
Four of the girls arrived early, on Sept. 9, the other four Friday. All were dropped off with shackles around their wrists and legs, and within five minutes they were vigorously exercising under the DIs' supervision. All received short haircuts.
The few weeks' difference in arrival showed Monday as the girls followed the boys to the exercise field before 7 a.m. under a gradually lightening sky and temperatures in the 50s. One newcomer, a stocky red-haired girl, fell behind her chanting peers after the first lap of the run.
She wavered on her feet, her eyes closed but her feet still moving, as a male drill instructor hovered protectively.
``I'm trying, sir,'' she kept saying. ``I'm trying, sir.''
Other newcomers also fell behind. In each case, drill instructors dropped their gruff demeanors, took the girls by the arms or hands, encouraged them to keep moving, didn't allow them to stop. Counselors watching beside the track shouted encouragement.
``Suck it in! Blow it out!'' Gunnery Sgt. Kathleen Schindler urged as she ran alongside the red-haired girl, using the phrase the intructors have made a mantra for the recruits.
``The first week, they hate it,'' said James E. Carriker III, one of the case managers who works with the teen-agers. ``After that, they love it.'' ILLUSTRATION: JUVENILE BOOT CAMP FOR GIRLS BEGINS
JOHN H. SHEALLY II
The Virginian-Pilot
Three new recruits at the state's first boot camp for girls are
counseled by math teacher Leinahtan Kendale and drill instructor
Vergena S. Harper
KEYWORDS: BOOT CAMP GIRLS by CNB