THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9601010048
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Kid Criminals
SOURCE: BY LAURENCE HAMMACK, THE ROANOKE TIMES
DATELINE: HOFFMAN, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 209 lines
Across the nation, an increasingly popular alternative to prison for young offenders is military-style boot camp. If Gov.George F. Allen has his way, more juvenile offenders will go to boot camps in Virginia, and at younger ages. Also, juvenile correctional centers will take on a distinctly military-style atmosphere.
Southampton Intensive Treatment Center, Virginia's first boot camp for juveniles who commit nonviolent crimes, has been in operation in Southampton County since 1991. The Department of Corrections, however, recently declined to allow a reporter to visit the facility. This youth boot camp in Hoffman, N.C., is similar to the one in Virginia.
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.
``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.''
This is a boot camp program for young criminals. Since 1989, North Carolina judges have been sending drug dealers, thieves and troublemakers to the brick compound surrounded by razor wire - in hopes 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.
``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., followed by hard labor all day 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,'' Taylor said. ``You've got to know when to kick their butts, and you've got to know when to put an arm around their shoulders.''
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.
National studies, however, have shown 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.
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.
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.
``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 instructors 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.''
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.
A group of drill instructors, dressed in camouflage fatigues and combat boots, gathers in the parking lot. They wait.
When the first car pulls up, three drill instructors 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 instructor 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 repeated countless times for those slow to catch on to the military way.
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.
``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 chant 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 any more,'' Baldwin tells the group. ``We own you.''
Baldwin and a half-dozen drill instructors continue their verbal bludgeoning as the trainees line up for haircuts. Sgt. Cornell Duncan plows his electronic clippers roughly over a boy's scalp.
Large clumps of hair fall to the floor.
Once the long hair, the bangs and the dreadlocks are gone, trainees are stripped of their remaining individuality. Nike sweat shirts, Tommy Hilfiger 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.''
The list goes on: trainees are denied telephone calls; there are 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.
At 4:30 a.m., reveille is blasted over the public address system, and the trainees start over again.
About one in 10 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.''
Trainees who are cut from the program for disciplinary or medical reasons return to the judge who sentenced them, 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 to clear land or clean property for state and local governments, local charities and communities.
A state study estimated that since IMPACT was created six years ago, trainees have worked over 550,000 hours on 87 projects. That amounts to $1.8 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 are usually too tired to be disruptive.
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 to a pass rate of about 35 percent for the rest of the prison system.
Some trainees jump at the chance to extol the programs' virtues.
``This program has helped me a lot,'' said 21-year-old Oswald Greene, who hopes to leave behind the drug business, enroll in community college, and 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.''
Some, though, worry about returning to the streets and inner-city neighborhoods where they succumbed to the lifestyle that put them here.
Eugene Coward wondered whether the past three months would be enough to keep him away from those same temptations.
``I'm worried that I'm going to get back into the same things that got me in trouble in the first place,'' said Coward, who was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.
But those who make it this far 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 . . . ''
``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.'' MEMO: Tuesday: Lawmakers likely will make changes this year in how youthful
criminals are dealt with in Virginia. What impact will they have on
juvenile offenders and their victims?
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by DON PETERSON, Roanoke Times
A drill instructor quickly seizes the attention of a ``trainee''
moments after the youth's arrival at a boot camp for juvenile
offenders in Hoffman, N.C. Boot camps have become increasingly
popular as states, responding to rising crime rates and overcrowded
prisons, look for sentencing alternatives.
DON PETERSON photos, Roanoke Times
Trainees leave the boot camp in formation to march to dinner. The
youths' long day begins with physical training at 4:30 a.m.
New trainees with freshly shaven heads read over the rules they must
follow during their stay at the boot camp.
A 19-year-old trainee breaks down while getting his head shaved
shortly after arriving. After their hair is gone, the trainees'
street clothes are replaced with fatigues and work boots.
KEYWORDS: JUVENILE CRIMINALS JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM ALTERNATIVE
PRISON by CNB