THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 3, 1996 TAG: 9602030029
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Opening of the Virginia Juvenile Boot Camp in Isle of Wight County this week should doubly cheer Virginians, worried as people are today about crime in general and corruption of youth in particular.
First, the new program, an alternative to probation or confinement in a juvenile correctional center, came about because of a successful local-state partnership. The city of Richmond had enough money for a 25-bed camp, and the state Department of Youth and Family Services had funding for 20 beds. It pooled its resources to create one facility with 45 beds.
The boot camp will accommodate primarily nonviolent offenders up to age 17, offering them a five-month highly structured regimen of exercise, work, study and counseling to be followed by six months of after-care.
While it shouldn't be confused with the Southampton Intensive Treatment Center, that program offers a military-style 90-day boot-camp for nonviolent first offenders up to age 24, convicted as adults. And results there may be instructive. In November, Southampton graduated its 1,000th probationer - out of 1,448 who had entered. And a 1994 study showed that, among those completing the program, 73 percent had remained offense-free.
The new juvenile facility is being run by Youth International Services Inc., whose senior vice president, David Dolch, said: ``We're going to break that pipeline into adult corrections. If you can change the way they think, you can change the way they act. Simply put, our mission is to take tax eaters and potential tax eaters and turn them into taxpaying citizens.''
The company claims 70 percent success among those who have gone through its boot camps. But even at 40 percent or 50 percent this would be a boon to public safety and a bargain for taxpayers.
That boot camps are a part of the compromise reached by the Governor's Commission on Juvenile Justice Reform and the General Assembly's Commission on Youth also should cheer Virginians.
The Allen administration has had a two-year fixation on harsher punishment at the expense of promising prevention and rehabilitation efforts. If the new moves signal a better crime-fighting balance overall, Virginia should become not only a safer place to live but a more productive state. by CNB