Reshaping juveniles at boot camp
Repost
Birmingham News newspaper:
Reshaping juveniles at boot camp
'High intensity training' focuses on treatment and building confidence,
discipline and skills
02/23/2000
STAN BAILEY
News staff writer
PRATTVILLE — Clinging to a rope at the top of a 60-foot tower, a
muscular youth
shouts to a boot camp group leader on the ground below.
"Winning is not a sometime thing, sir! It's an all-the-time thing, sir!"
he
yells.
"You don't win once in a while. You don't do things right once in a
while. You
do them right all the time, sir! Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so
is
losing. I'm a winner, sir!"
About 600 juvenile offenders each year spend four weeks or more at a
boot camp
at the Department of Youth Services' Autauga Campus, and the youth was
among a
recent class. The program's slogan was borrowed from legendary football
coach
Vince Lombardi.
"It's a first attempt to take kids just getting in trouble and do
something
very intense and meaningful, to give them a sense of accomplishment,"
said
Keith Duck, the director of the camp since it began in 1994.
In Maryland, Arizona, Georgia and other states, get-tough paramilitary
boot
camps have been shut down, scaled back or restructured because of
problems that
included staff abuses, inmate deaths, high costs and poor results. But
in
Alabama, the DYS boot camp program is holding steady, apparently without
serious problems.
"Alabama as a whole was never in the hard-core paramilitary stuff," said
DYS
spokesman Allen Peaton.
Alabama's boot camps - including seven locally operated regional camps
around
the state and two state-run camps in Prattville and Thomasville - sprang
up in
the mid-'90s in the wake of a lawsuit against DYS.
The suit, named after a youth with the initials A.W., resulted in
federal
orders to better protect and improve treatment of juveniles in state
custody.
It required the state to build more facilities and develop individual
plans for
meeting the needs of each youth in the system.
The case also brought millions of dollars in state money, which provided
support for locally operated programs through the DYS budget, Peaton
said.
Unlike the boot camps in other states which "tear down and demean"
juvenile
inmates, Alabama's "high intensity training" or "H.I.T." camps, like the
78-bed
Autauga campus, focus on treatment and building confidence, discipline
and
skills, said DYS Director Walter Wood.
"This is a treatment program. It just happens to be structured using
some basic
military concepts," Wood said. "There is an assessment of needs when
they come
in. We don't assume what they need. We give them an opportunity to have
a
little time out from whatever has caused them to be in trouble.
"We're not trying to do something to them but to do something for them."
Although Wood said the Alabama boot camp program is working, he has no
figures
to show how frequently youths who complete the program return to state
custody.
National studies have shown that from 64 percent to 75 percent of boot
camp
graduates return, while return rates for regular detention programs
range from
63 percent to 71 percent.
Ineffective, harmful
A U.S. Justice Department report on Georgia boot camps - modeled after
U.S.
Marine boot camps at the urging of former Marine and former Georgia Gov.
Zell
Miller - concluded that "the paramilitary boot camp model is not only
ineffective, but harmful" to mentally ill or very young offenders.
Georgia's boot camps are being dismantled and restructured to eliminate
the
paramilitary features such as marching and shouting because they proved
costly
and not very effective, said Kip Mann, a spokesman for the Georgia
Department
of Juvenile Justice.
Steve Meissner, public information officer for the Arizona Department of
Juvenile Corrections, said the state-run boot camp there was closed last
July.
"We ended the program after two years for two reasons. It was 50 percent
more
costly because of the higher staff ratio, and we had trouble identifying
the
right kind of kids," said Meissner.
Arizona's 24-bed boot camp targeted 15and 16-year-olds who were classed
as
medium level offenders. Participants got four months of paramilitary
training
in secure quarters, then another nine months of aftercare, where they
gradually
were given more freedom and were required to identify and deal with the
problems that got them into trouble in the first place, Meissner said.
Alabama's Autauga campus boot camp is intensely structured - from the 5
a.m.
wake up call, to physical training at 6 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. every day, to
lights
out at 9 p.m.
The program tells them when they can eat, when they can shower and brush
their
teeth, and even when they can go to the bathroom. But it also focuses on
"between the ears" subjects such as controlling anger, moral reasoning,
respecting others and working as a team, its handbook says.
When the youths go home, they remain under court supervision. Parents
are
expected to do their part to keep them on the track they began at camp.
The booklet given to parents advises them that their child will require
further
adjustments and guidance after leaving the camp, because when he goes
home he
will face again the situations that got him in trouble.
Love, guidance
"This is where you come in," the manual states. "With your love and
guidance,
you can help him in continuing to grow into a responsible young adult...
Help
him realize that you care about him and are there whenever he needs
you."
Duck calls his Prattville camp a "semi-boot camp" because "a lot of
treatment
goes on. It's not an in-your-face type of place."
Since his program opened in 1994, two employees have been suspended for
improper treatment of inmates, including one who shoved a youth against
a wall,
Duck said.
"I have to let them know that ain't what we do," he said.
The Prattville camp's tower is the final challenge the inmates must meet
before
they can go home, Duck said.
The tower is supposed to symbolize victory over fear, their upward climb
away
from a troubled past, and their achievement of a new perspective on
life.
"It changed my attitude. It let me know that if I can accomplish this, I
can do
anything," 18-year-old R.W. said after climbing the tower on a balmy
morning
last week.
"It helped me get over my fears," said R.H., another youth who had
climbed the
tower. "You've got to have physical strength and mental strength. The
mental
part is the hardest
EndlsRayne
of trying to hire a staff of sociopaths to see how much they can torture
someone while they are there. They should,however, consider adding some job
training to the program ,because the concept of ' I can climb this tower so I
can do anything else' is a little on the lame side.