ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512180032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HOFFMAN, N.C.
SERIES: Kids and Crime
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A single teardrop traces a shiny path down the young drug dealer's cheek. Sgt. Issac Baldwin has the 17-year-old backed up against a brick wall. Baldwin is close enough to whisper in the boy's ear, but he is shouting instead.
"Don't nobody care about you crying," Baldwin barks. The youth lifts a hand to wipe away the evidence, but Baldwin orders him to stand at attention with his arms at his side.
"You can cry all you want to," Baldwin says. "You did it. You put this on yourself. We didn't get you here."
"Here" is a boot camp program for young criminals. Since 1989, North Carolina judges have been sending drug dealers, thieves and troublemakers to this brick compound surrounded by razor wire - in hope of turning their lives around with more discipline, structure and hard work in three months than many have seen in a lifetime.
Baldwin explains the concept as the 17-year-old returns to a line where 18 other "trainees" are waiting to have their heads shaved. It is their first day in the program, and their expressions range from dazed and distraught to silently defiant.
"They come in here and they've got attitudes, and they've never been disciplined," Baldwin said. "The first thing we do is get their hair; a lot of people take pride in their hair.
"You take their pride, and you break them down totally, until there's nothing left. And then we start rebuilding and remolding them."
Boot camp is not all push-ups and punishment, though. Most of the screaming subsides after the first day of "intake," and trainees settle into a daily regimen of physical training that starts at 4:30 a.m., hard labor all day long, and classroom instruction into the night.
Col. John Taylor, who heads the boot camp at Hoffman and a second one in Morganton, says the secret is to strike the right balance of toughness and compassion:
"There's a fine line between abuse and discipline. ... You've got to know when to kick their butts, and you've got to know when to put an arm around their shoulders."
The boot camp cure
Boot camps, also known as shock incarceration, have become increasingly popular in recent years as states, responding to rising crime rates and overcrowded prisons, look for sentencing alternatives.
In 1991, Virginia opened a boot camp in Southampton for nonviolent offenders. The Department of Corrections recently denied a request by The Roanoke Times to visit the boot camp on an intake day.
Virginia's boot camp program - which is similar to the one in North Carolina - soon may be expanded. A commission appointed by Gov. George Allen wants to put more young offenders in boot camps as a way to toughen the state's juvenile justice system and reduce crime.
National studies, however, have shown that the rate at which boot camp graduates commit new crimes is only slightly lower than that of similar offenders who serve longer sentences in prison.
Critics question whether three months of discipline can overcome a lifetime of delinquency.
"Boot camp taught me how to stop thinking, how to shoot straight and how to rationalize killing people who were not like me," said Hunter Hurst, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice, referring to his military experience. "That hardly seems like the kind of thing you would want to build into a program for criminal offenders, unless you're going to send him into a war zone.
"Teaching him to be a mindless follower, in my opinion, is reinforcing a primary problem that he already had."
At the Hoffman boot camp - also know as IMPACT, for Intensive Motivational Program of Alternative Correctional Treatment - the drill inspectors realize that some youths can't be changed.
"We get in 30 of them at one time," Baldwin said. "But if I can get just one of them turned around and back on the right track, that's satisfaction right there for me."
`We own you'
Early on the morning of Nov. 6, at different cities and towns across North Carolina, 19 young men climb into the back seats of state-issued cars driven by their probation officers. They begin the trip to IMPACT, a prison amid pine forests in the remote countryside east of Rockingham.
Drill inspectors, dressed in camouflage fatigues and combat boots, gather in the parking lot. They wait.
When the first car pulls up, three of the drill inspectors descend on it like vultures on roadkill. Cpl. Ronald Fields does not wait for the startled youth to step out. Bending over, he begins to yell through the closed window.
"Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!'' he screams. "You better move it, boy!''
The car door opens. The boy stands up, bewildered, and is instantly engulfed by noise and fury. One inspector yells in his right ear, another in his left. A third spits orders directly into his face.
"Stand up straight! Get those heels together! Hands behind you! You look straight ahead and you do not say anything, do you understand?''
From behind the steering wheel, the boy's probation officer smiles ever so slightly.
Trainees who slouch, shift their eyes, or dare to speak are forced to drop to the sandy soil for 10 push-ups - a punishment that is repeated countless times for those slow to catch on to the military way.
"Stupid!'' a drill inspector berates one trainee. "You're just out-and-out stupid!''
Sgt. Edward Gazoo watches from about 20 feet away. This is the "shock" part of shock incarceration, he says, and the idea is to get the trainee's attention as quickly as possible.
"They've just been out on the street doing their own thing and not following any rules but their own," he said. "This is definitely the first taste of discipline that they've had."
One by one, the trainees are sent sprinting to a nearby van, where they sit in silence, ramrod straight with their hands on their knees. Those who do not run fast enough, or sit still enough, are ordered out for more push-ups. When the entire class has arrived, the trainees are lined up on a sidewalk.
"People, you've got 90 days, and you belong to me," Baldwin tells the group. "The first and last word out of your mouth for the entire time you are here is going to be `sir.' 'Sir, yes, sir. Sir, no, sir.' Do you understand?''
"Sir, yes, sir!'' the trainees yell back in unison.
Grabbing a gray five-gallon plastic bucket, Baldwin walks down the line and tells the trainees to empty their pockets. Wallets, keys, loose change, combs and a beeper are dumped into the bucket.
"You don't own anything anymore," Baldwin tells the group. "We own you."
Baldwin and a half-dozen drill inspectors continue their verbal bludgeoning as the trainees line up for haircuts. Sgt. Cornell Duncan pulls on latex gloves and asks brusquely if a trainee has any bumps or scars on his head. He then plows his electronic clippers roughly over the boy's scalp.
Large clumps of hair fall to the floor. The buzz of the clippers is drowned out by Fields, who is shouting again.
"What did you do to come here?'' he asks the next trainee in line.
"Drugs, sir," the trainee says.
"Drugs, sir?'' Fields spits back, outraged. "What was the first thing they told you when you got here? It's Sir, drugs, sir."
``Sir, drugs, sir," the trainee says.
Once the long hair, the bangs and the dreadlocks are gone, trainees are stripped of their remaining individuality. Nike sweat shirts, Tommy Hilfieger T-shirts, baggy blue jeans and a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity cap are replaced by pea-green fatigues and scuffed work boots.
"This will be your bible for the next 90 days," a drill instructor says as the trainees are handed red binders full of the rules and regulations:
"There will be no talking during any formation."
"There will be no lying or sitting on any beds, or lying or sitting on the floor unless authorized to do so by staff."
"Beds will be made daily prior to leaving the housing units for work call."
The list goes on: Trainees are allowed no telephone calls, no visits until late in the three-month program, no posters, no books, no radio or television, no junk food, no more than three letters from home - any more must be sent back.
There is no recreation for the entire three months. The only free time is a half-hour of "commandant's time," a chance to write home before the lights go out at 9 p.m.
After starting the day with physical training and drills before dawn, then working outdoors all day before going to night school, most trainees fall asleep right away - except those who have broken any of the many rules. They stay up past midnight, scrubbing floors and cleaning the dorms as punishment.
At 4:30 a.m., reveille is blasted over the public-address system, and the trainees start all over again.
`My attitude has changed, sir'
About one in 10 of the trainees will not make it through the program. Others will ask to drop out - saying they'd rather go to prison - but are told they cannot leave.
"We could terminate half these guys in the first or second week," Capt. Robert Webster said. "But that's too easy, to just throw them out. We want to get them through the program, and let them accomplish something for once in their lives."
After the first month, trainees discover that the worst part is behind them.
"We don't see the point of making them do push-ups until they puke their guts out," Webster said. "What good does that do? All you're doing is instilling more hate and encouraging them not to participate with you."
Trainees who are terminated from the program for disciplinary or medical reasons return to the judge who sent them there, and often go on to prison.
At least seven hours of every day are spent away from the IMPACT compound. Trainees are bused to work sites where they clear land or clean property for state and local governments, as well as do cleanup work for local charities and community groups.
A state study estimated that, since IMPACT was created, trainees have worked over 550,000 hours on 87 projects. That amounts to $2.3 million worth of free labor.
By the time trainees get back to the compound and report to classrooms at 6 p.m. - or 1800 hours to them - they usually are too tired to cause disruptions.
On a recent Monday night, former troublemakers and classroom cut-ups sat quietly and listened as grammar and essay-writing instructor Patricia Jones read aloud Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat."
Eighty percent of the boot camp trainees go on to pass the GED test, compared with a pass rate of about 35 percent for the rest of the prison system.
Trainees also receive drug and alcohol counseling, and must complete a human resources class that stresses such basic topics as personal hygiene, interpersonal relations, job interview tips and how to balance a checkbook.
"We don't try to build rocket scientists here," Gazoo said. "We just try to teach them some basic life skills."
Trainees jump at the chance to extoll the programs' virtues.
"This program has helped me a lot," said 21-year-old Oswald Greene, who hopes to leave the drug business behind, go to community college, then start his own construction business.
"Sir, yes, sir; It's a good program," said Antonio Turrentine, a drug dealer from Durham. "When I first came here, I had a bad attitude. But my attitude has changed, sir."
Home, the next challenge
On a dreary November morning, trainees who were just one week from graduation broke into wide grins as they talked about how they were looking forward to going home.
For some, though, home is the streets and the inner-city neighborhoods where they succumbed to a lifestyle that put them here.
The question that haunted Eugene Coward was whether the past three months would be enough to keep him away from those same temptations.
"I'm concerned," said Coward, who was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. "I'm worried that I'm going to get back into the same things that got me in trouble in the first place."
A recent North Carolina Department of Correction study showed that 40 percent of the boot camp graduates were arrested on a new offense, compared with a recidivism rate of 51 percent for former prison inmates.
But for those who have made it this far, they are changed men - at least for now.
"Their appearance changes, their attitude changes, everything about them changes," Webster said. "There's a 100 percent difference in the ones that stay, from the day they get here to when they leave."
"I've had some parents come in here on visiting day, and they're looking for Johnny," he said. "And Johnny is standing right next to them, but they don't recognize their own son."
LENGTH: Long : 240 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. - 3. First-day scenes: Tears fill the eyes of aby CNB19-year-old trainee as he gets his head shaved at the Hoffman boot
camp; a new arrival gets instructions from Cpl. Ronald Fields; and
a trainee is ordered to do push-ups for not following orders color
DON PETERSEN/Staff
4. Trainees leave the camp to join the formation to march to dinner.
color
5. Trainees spend more than seven hours a day at work, much of which
involves clearing land or cleaning property for government agencies.
color
6. DON PETERSEN/Staff A trainee stops the camp chaplain on the
sidewalk and asks him for a prayer. color
7. After their haircuts, trainees study the rules and regulations of
their new home. color
8. map - Location of Va. & N.C. boot camps color STAFF
9. chart - A day at North Carolina's Boot Camp. color