Pubdate: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 1999 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Author: Francis X. Clines, New York Times HEAT TURNED UP ON JUVENILE BOOT CAMPS Reports Of Abuse: Maryland Accusations, Firings Follow Questions, Scrutiny Of Similar Programs Across U.S. BALTIMORE -- In the face of a looming scandal, Maryland shut down its once ballyhooed boot camp regimen for juvenile offenders last week, providing further evidence of grave second thoughts across the nation about the "get tough" camps favored by politicians during the last decade. After an emergency investigation concluded that there was a pattern of guards punishing teenage inmates with roughhouse abuses, Gov. Parris Glendening suspended the paramilitary methods and trappings at the state's three camps and removed his top five justice executives. At the same time, 14 of the quasi-drill-sergeant camp guards were suspended as criminal and civil rights investigations began. One guard has already been charged with child abuse. "The trust of the people of Maryland has been violated," the governor declared as the scandal, spurred by a series of articles in the Baltimore Sun, reached crisis proportions with a Baltimore judge intervening to remove 26 juveniles from the camps and expressing "grave concern" at the teenage offenders' many complaints about abusive guards. The boot camp approach to juvenile criminals, based on enforcing rugged military-obedience techniques of verbal and physical regimentation, has been adopted in recent years in many states frustrated by youth crime. But lately some of the 52 boot camps housing 4,500 juveniles across the country are being scrutinized because of instances of excessive force and, even more, because of mounting research findings that the camps, for all their attempts at rigid discipline, offer no improvement on traditional detention methods. Boot Camps Closing In Georgia, where a former Marine received national attention in pioneering the boot camp approach, the state decided this month to begin phasing out its five boot camps after a stinging conclusion by the U.S. Justice Department that "the paramilitary boot camp model is not only ineffective, but harmful" to juvenile offenders. Colorado, North Dakota and Arizona have also dropped their programs, while Florida and California are scaling theirs back. Official doubts have been growing in the face of some notorious examples of abuses. In South Dakota, Gina Score, a 14-year-old convicted of shoplifting, died from heat exhaustion after her drill instructors concluded that she was faking illness during a forced march. Last year, Nicholaus Contreraz of Sacramento, a 16-year-old convicted of robbery, died in an Arizona boot camp after being punished for discipline violations. "The boot camps are just the crisis of the day," said Jann Jackson, executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth, a private justice agency, who served here on the governor's emergency investigation of the camps. "It reflects far deeper systemic problems in a justice system that has been failing kids for years from the moment of intake to after-care." Various juvenile justice and welfare advocates said in interviews that Maryland officials had received repeated earlier warnings of widespread problems in youth detention centers but had ignored them until the Sun reported a pattern of abuses by boot camp guards and pressed political leaders for reaction. Week Of Accusations Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is charged with overseeing the criminal justice system, announced the firings Thursday after a week of front-page accusations that teenagers were struck and gratuitously humiliated by overzealous guards in the three years of the program. "The boot camp is a model that lends itself to abuses," said Jim McComb, chair of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition, a group of professional specialists that was warning of problems long before the current scandal. There is no evidence that the camps do any good, McComb said. "Why take the risk of abusing children to defend the camps?" he asked after Glendening asserted that, despite current problems, a way might yet be found to make the boot camp an effective tool. Various members of the coalition opposed to boot camps expressed concern that the Glendening administration would retain a "get tough" philosophy to protect itself politically, while leaving unsolved large and expensive problems, like crowding, throughout the juvenile system. "The answers go far beyond firing five people," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. For all the news media attention to the boot camps, Schiraldi said, state officials have long been warned about less dramatic problems at the Cheltenham detention center, where, he said, 100 detainees were sleeping crowded into a day room designed for recreation by 26 people. In a national study of recidivism this year by the Koch Crime Institute, a research organization in Topeka, Kan., the rates for juveniles from boot camps ranged from 64 percent to 75 percent, while the rates for those from traditional detention centers were 63 percent to 71 percent. "We were aware of the boot camp problem and terminated seven of the guards even before this brouhaha," said Jack Nadol, Maryland's deputy secretary of juvenile justice, who refused to resign and was fired by the governor. "I think the articles sensationalized the problem and didn't show the kids who have gone on to college or the military." - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk