AMERICAN IDEAS, Page 17Shock IncarcerationA Dose of Discipline for First OffendersParamilitary treatment humiliates young criminals -- but doesit work?By Joseph J. Kane
Time was when what used to be called juvenile delinquents were
offered a stark choice: join the service or go to jail. A dose of
military discipline was supposed to make a man out of a boy and
set him on the path to respectable citizenship. But the
all-volunteer armed forces eliminated that option for what are now
called youthful offenders. In a growing number of states, however,
the purported benefits of paramilitary discipline are being
showered on young criminals through programs known as "shock
incarceration."
Nine states have such programs, and 30 more are considering
them. They have also become a key idea in drug czar William
Bennett's war on illicit substances. Usually the programs fence off
parts of state prisons into "boot camps," where 17-to-25-year-old
first offenders convicted of drug or property crimes are held for
three to six months. Between head shaving, close-order drills and
servile work, the youthful felons are screamed and hollered at by
correctional officers skilled in the art of humiliation. They are
compelled to rise at dawn, eat meals in silence, speak only when
spoken to ("Sir, yessir"). The hope is that the rough treatment
they experience will produce a permanent "change of attitude" that
will survive after the inmates are released.
A typical boot camp is the Al Burruss Correctional Training
Center in Forsyth, Ga., where 150 inmates are housed in two-level,
spartan, modern facilities. A scene one recent morning:
correctional officer Eddie Cash greets burglar Robert Parker and
three other new inmates with a stream of profane abuse.
"Let's get something straight right now, chumps. Anything you
do in the next 90 days must go through me," shouts Cash, from a
distance of no more than four inches from Parker's ear. "I am God
around here, and I am going to see to it that none of you ever gets
out of here. You've got a problem with me. I am a certified psycho.
I hate this job, and I hate you. I got too much responsibility for
a psycho." The tirade continues. "You're in here for burglary," he
shrieks at Parker. "You are stupid, you know that? I wish it had
been my house. You'd be pushing daisies right now. You don't want
to tick me off 'cause I'll snatch your head off and shove it down
your throat."
By now Cash is soaking with sweat and stomping the floor. His
neck veins are popping and his eyes are bulging as he works his way
from inmate to inmate, delivering a series of blistering,
nose-to-nose tongue-lashings. At the end of Cash's 45-minute
outburst, the frightened inmates run right out of their shoes into
a dressing room -- and another bout of humiliation. As if on cue,
an aide shows up with electric clippers and shaves the young men's
heads. The inmates then strip naked, and an assistant sprays them
with delousing fluid. All the while, Cash keeps up his string of
personal insults.
The new inmates soon become immersed in the boot-camp routine.
The day begins at 5 a.m., when correctional officer Robert Richards
mashes down on a bank of toggle switches, unlocking the cell doors.
"On line, on line, let's go!" he shouts, as bleary-eyed inmates
appear at attention in the doorways. Then there is cell clean-up,
a shower and marching off to breakfast. Any inmate who deviates
even slightly from the prescribed regimentation is ordered to drop
to the ground and "give me 50" -- meaning 50 push-ups.
The remainder of the day is filled with menial labor: whacking
weeds, swabbing floors, painting walls, marching in formation. As
they half-step, an officer asks, "What is the word for the day?"
The platoon answers, "Self-discipline. We like it. We love it. We
want more of it, sir!" At 10 p.m., it is lights out.
"We really don't want to show them any respect," says Cash as
one platoon trudges by. "Why should we? They are criminals. Most
dropped out of the tenth grade. They come to us and then go back
to their old environment. The inmate will be in that environment
longer than he will be with us. This program is definitely worth
having unless I see a better way. It is better than warehousing
them and teaching them to be better criminals."
The big question is, Does any of this work? In Georgia, where
boot camps were invented in 1983, boosters claim that it costs only
$3,400 to house and revamp one inmate in 90 days, in contrast to
the $15,000 annual bill for housing a prisoner in the state
penitentiary. Boot camps provide one unquestioned benefit: they get
the youthful offenders off the street and give them a taste of the
debasement of prison life while offering them a startling "one last
chance" to straighten out.
But in Georgia, experts say 35% of boot-camp graduates are back
in prison within three years, roughly the same rate as for those
paroled from the general prison population. Blitzing young people
into acceptable behavior through terror has been tried before and
has failed. Ohio experimented with "shock probation" in 1965,
sentencing first offenders to the penitentiary for 90 days. The
disastrous results were indolence, sodomy and violence. Prisoners
at the East Jersey State Prison in Rahway played real-life roles
in which they confronted juvenile offenders on probation to
demonstrate the violence behind the walls. Subsequent studies by
Rutgers University showed that the 1978 film Scared Straight
frightened the lesser punks into proper living, but the more
sophisticated toughs came to view the inmates as role models.
The inherent fault with such scare tactics, says David C.
Evans, Georgia's commissioner of corrections, is expecting too much
from them. Says he: "Too many middle-class whites see it as the
answer, a panacea." But with minimal counseling or after-shock
guidance, the boot-camp experience "is just a car wash for
criminals who are supposed to be cleansed for life," says Pat
Gilliard, executive director of the Clearinghouse on Georgia
Prisons and Jails. Edward J. Loughran, commissioner of the
department of youth services in Massachusetts, dismisses the whole
idea of shock therapy because "you cannot undo 15 to 17 years of
a life of abuse by barking into a kid's face and having him do
push-ups."
Drug czar Bennett agrees with those correctional officers who
believe shock incarceration is no cure-all for street crime, though
it can help "build character." It seems to have the most effect on
nonviolent young men for whom crime has not become a hardened way
of life. The program appears to work best for youngsters who might
have been helped just as much by a resolute kick in the pants and
some productive community service and victim reparation. Perhaps
that is a more realistic way of coping with the burgeoning problem
