Boot camps

SIGNIFICANCE: The United States incarcerates a higher proportion of juveniles and young adults than most of the nations of the world. The resulting high costs and overcrowding, with few positive rehabilitation benefits, have created a need for more cost-effective programs that reduce recidivism rates. It was initially hoped that boot camps would meet these goals; however, they have failed to fulfill their promise.

Boot camps—or, as they are also known, shock incarceration programs—were first established during the 1980s in response to rising crime rates, overcrowding in prisons, and high recidivism rates. The camps were intended to be an intermediate sanction between long-term institutionalization and immediate supervised release. While boot camp programs were originally designed for adults, the juvenile justice system has also adopted them. Some boot camps are financed and run by state governments, while others are privately owned and operated. Private boot camps often operate with little regulation. The great majority of boot camps are for male prisoners only, but a few have included female prisoners, and some have been designed exclusively for female prisoners.

Shock Incarceration

The types of programs known as “boot camps” vary considerably. The military “basic training” aspect of boot camps is what distinguishes them from other correction programs. These camps are referred as “shock incarceration” because they offer short, stressful experiences that are intended to encourage reform by the offenders. The first-generation boot camps emphasized military discipline, physical training, and hard physical work. Second-generation camps placed more emphasis on rehabilitation by adding such components as alcohol and drug treatment and social skills counseling. By the early twentieth century, some boot camps—particularly those for juveniles—were placing greater emphasis on educational and vocational skills than on military components, while still providing similar structure and discipline.

Adult boot camp programs are generally designed for younger, nonviolent offenders with first felony convictions. However, some camps have age limits as high as forty years. Juvenile boot camps are also generally restricted to nonviolent, first-time offenders. Lengths of stay are generally from three to six months in adult boot camps and from one to three months in juvenile camps. Adults are placed in boot camps though criminal courts. State courts also send juveniles to state-run boot camps, but juveniles are also sent to private boot camps by other courts and parents.

Oklahoma and Georgia were the first states to implement boot camp programs during the early 1980s. Other states followed in rapidly increasing numbers during the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, during the mid-1990s, both the numbers and daily populations of boot camps started decreasing, and that trend has continued through the first half decade of the twenty-first century. The state of Texas, formerly a leading state in boot camps, provides one example. By August, 2004, officials in Texas had shut down or converted six of the state’s seven boot camps that had been created during the 1990s. Georgia, Colorado, North Dakota, and Arizona have all ended their programs, and Florida and California have both scaled back their programs.

Decline of Boot Camp Programs

The two most prominent reasons for the decline of boot camps are research findings indicating that the camps have failed to achieve their goals and widespread reports of abuses, deaths, and lawsuits. In 2003, the National Institute of Justice concluded a summary of research done on boot camps over a ten-year period. That study analysis found that while boot camps did have positive effects on the attitudes, perceptions, behaviors, and skills of inmates in the programs, the programs did not result in reduced recidivism, with limited exceptions. Subsequent meta-analyses in 2009 and 2013 produced similar results. The National Institute of Justice study, as well as other research, indicates that boot camps cost somewhat less than prison or juvenile training schools, resulting in modest reductions in correctional costs. They can also contribute to small reductions in prison and training school populations.

Numerous reports of abuses, deaths, and suicides at both juvenile and adult boot camps across the country have also contributed to their decline, both because they have outraged people and because they have resulted in expensive lawsuits. Notorious examples include a 2000 case involving a fourteen-year-old girl who died from heat exhaustion in a South Dakota boot camp, where she was placed for shoplifting, after her drill instructors decided that her complaints were merely malingering. In 2001, a sixteen-year-old in Arizona died after being punished for discipline violations. By 2003, at least thirty-six juveniles had died in boot camps. A 2005 investigation by the Government Accountability Office found 1,619 instances of abuse in juvenile boot camps throughout the country.

Financial risks may have as much to do with the reduction in use of boot camps as abuses and deaths. Courts have ordered many states and private corrections corporations to pay large amounts in punitive damages. For example, a class-action suit in Maryland led to a court order for the state to pay four million dollars to juveniles abused at its boot camps from 1996 to 1999. The largest such award was in Texas in 2003, when a Tarrant County jury ordered the Correctional Services Corporation to pay the parents of a juvenile named Bryan Alexander $5.1 million in punitive damages and $35 million in actual damages for their son’s death and suffering and their mental anguish. The boy had died at the Mansfield boot camp run by the Correctional Services Corporation, which is based in Florida.

Due to their dangers and lack of demonstrable effect, boot camps have declined in popularity. By 2009, only eleven states operated juvenile boot camps, down from thirty in 1995.

The Future of Boot Camps

It is generally believed that if boot camps are to have a future in either the adult or juvenile justice system, they must be better regulated and be more successful in reducing recidivism. Moreover, the study conducted by the National Institute of Justice and other smaller research studies indicate that if boot camps are to be more successful in the future there should be a standard boot camp model that includes therapeutic programs as well as discipline, with more emphasis on re-entry into the community and post-release supervision and assistance.

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