Shock

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 of youthful crime.