Mainstreet Radio’s Catherine Winter looks at Challenge Incarceration Program, a Minnesota juvenile boot camp in Willow River. Supporters say strict discipline and hard work will knock some sense into criminals. But research seems to indicate that boot camps don’t work, don’t save money, and they don’t rehabilitate criminals.
Around the country, more and more states are building boot camps; in just over a decade, nearly every state has opened a camp for adults. Now, many states are opening camps for juveniles.
Transcripts
text | pdf |
CATHERINE WINTER: On a cold winter afternoon, a van pulls into the lot at the boot camp in Willow river and a half dozen nervous looking men scramble out right.
BOOT CAMP GUARD 1: Move it! Let's go! Over here! Right up here! Get up on this yellow line. Face this way. Yellow line. Face this way.
CATHERINE WINTER: The men line up behind a yellow line painted on the sidewalk, a few clutching their belongings in paper bags as guards yell at them.
[GUARDS SHOUTING OVERLAPPING ORDERS]
BOOT CAMP GUARD 2: Ma'am, yes, ma'am! Do you have a problem with that?
CATHERINE WINTER: The director of the Challenge Incarceration program, Doug Appelgren, follows the new prisoners into a gym to watch them begin to learn marching moves. Guards lead some of the men away for haircuts or to be searched.
BOOT CAMP GUARD 3: We are now strip searching them, make sure that they didn't come in with any contraband. Their personal clothing is being inventoried and locked up. And we're issuing them uniforms now as we speak. So it's just part of the intensity makes sure that from this point on, life has changed for them.
BOOT CAMP GUARD 2: Right face!
INMATES: 1, 2.
BOOT CAMP GUARD 2: Right face!
INMATES: 1, 2.
CATHERINE WINTER: Appelgren says, these are typical inmates, men who committed drug crimes or theft. Prisoners volunteered to take part in the program. By spending three months here, they can shave as much as 2 and 1/2 years off their prison sentences. Like military recruits, they run and march and work. They also go to school. Appelgren says, many prisoners improve their math or reading skills by three or four grade levels in three months. Inmates also get drug treatment and take classes in how to get along in the outside world.
BOOT CAMP GUARD 3: We do a big segment on criminal thinking errors and what is the profile of the criminal and what are the errors there and how do you turn that around? We have some health classes in terms of just body awareness and sexual awareness. The dietician has five classes on nutrition. We teach some money management classes.
CATHERINE WINTER: Appelgren believes the program changes people. He says, when they graduate, inmates hug staff members and thank them, something you don't normally see at a prison.
MARLENA GRIFFIN: I think this program is a really tremendous, great program. It's good for a lot of things, physically and emotionally. It teaches you how to be a more better person. They teach you about parts of yourself that you don't even know that's there.
CATHERINE WINTER: Inmate Marlena Griffin was arrested on drug charges. She's been here 30 days and says, the program is helping her get her life together.
MARLENA GRIFFIN: I have education. And I love it. I've never read books before. I read Color Purple. I couldn't believe it. I read it. I mean, I felt it. I mean, I got into it. It was like-- I was just telling my teacher yesterday, thanks, you know, because I never read. It's never been something I wanted to do. And I've read that book. And it was like, whoa, man, now I'm so interested. I want to read, read, read.
CATHERINE WINTER: It's not clear whether Minnesota's boot camp really is rehabilitating people. It hasn't been around long enough for follow up studies, but National Research seems to show that whatever happens in boot camps does not stick with people after they leave. University of Maryland Professor Doris MacKenzie studied prison boot camps around the country. She found no evidence that adult boot camps reduce recidivism. MacKenzie says, there's no reason to think camps for juveniles will work either.
DORIS MACKENZIE: The public seems to think that this is what these kids need, this structure and this discipline. Politicians seem to remember their time when they were in the military. And so there's this feeling that it will change people. And we really don't have the evidence to support their beliefs. And it's really disappointing. I think we need a lot more research to know whether there's anything that does work.
CATHERINE WINTER: MacKenzie says, boot camps don't tend to save states much money either. She says, you could argue that they do achieve one goal. They punish criminals. But the goal of Minnesota's juvenile system is to rehabilitate young criminals, not just to punish them. Corrections Commissioner Fred LaFleur says, he thinks a camp can help rehabilitate kids if it's done right, if it provides education and teaches living skills. And doesn't shame kids. The governor's plan calls for a camp that would offer weekend and longer term programs for juveniles. LaFleur says, nobody will scream in kids' faces at the camp, but the kids will work.
FRED LAFLEUR: The vast majority of kids who come into our system, you know, don't have an understanding of the work ethic. If you've lived in an environment where no one has ever gotten up and gone to work, for me to talk to you about the work ethic is sort of silly. On the other hand, you know, if I began to tell you this is the way mainstream people live, and this is what is required of you, we have to get you through this period called adolescence so that you can grow up, get married, get in debt like the rest of us, and work for the rest of your life.
CATHERINE WINTER: Minnesota already has a camp where kids do hard work. They don't do military drills, but young lawbreakers at Thistle-Do Camp in Northern Minnesota cut wood and take part in a challenging, outward bound style program. LaFleur acknowledges the new camp wouldn't be much different from Thistle-Do.
And Thistle-Do has a dismal recidivism record. The State Auditor recently found that most of the kids who go through Thistle-Do get arrested again after they're released. In fact, most kids and adults who leave any state facility get arrested later. LaFleur acknowledges attempts to rehabilitate criminals don't seem to be working. But he says the prison system alone can't solve the problem.
FRED LAFLEUR: It does no good for us to do all of the kinds of work that we can do with kids in institutions simply to put them back in those same negative environments. And a number of cases, the home environments that we're sending them back are going to guarantee failure.
CATHERINE WINTER: LaFleur says, nothing will change unless criminals are supervised after they're released. He says, the corrections department has been doing more checking up on kids released from Thistle-Do and the recidivism rate is improving. The governor's crime plan includes money for follow up programs for kids released from boot camp.
State public defender John Stuart says, he'd like the state to spend more to supervise adults released from prison, too. The number of people on probation and parole in Minnesota has climbed to 100,000, and Stuart says, probation officers can't keep track of them.
JOHN STUART: Felony probation officers in Hennepin County had an average caseload of 150 people. You can hardly tell if you're probationer is dead or alive with a caseload like that, let alone be finding out if they're applying for jobs, if they've had some kind of a chemical dependency slip. To think that a program of a few months in a kind of a military style atmosphere is going to make everything go smooth for them the rest of their lives is unrealistic.
CATHERINE WINTER: Still, Stuart says, it's OK with him if his clients wind up in boot camp where they can improve their reading and math rather than just sitting in a prison cell. Stuart says, a boot camp is better than prison, but he hopes the state will keep looking for something better than a boot camp. I'm Catherine Winter, Mainstreet radio.