Hours In the Sun:
Boot Camp Abuse Revisited

Published in the Apalachicola Times and the Valley Times News.

"I cried all the way to work," wrote my colleague Cynthia in an E-mail.

She was responding to an E-mail I had sent her the day before asking if she had heard a story broadcast on National Public Radio's Morning Edition about a 14-year-old girl who had died of a heat stroke in a boot camp in North Dakota.

The girl had been sent to a boot camp for a status offense - an offense that is only criminal because the person committing it is a juvenile - running away from home, pilfering small amounts of money from a parent, etc. She was roughly 5 feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds. She was clearly a child who should have been excluded from the rigors of the boot camp regime for health reasons.

But, she was not excluded. And, predictably, she collapsed after a forced march. If that were the end of the story, it would be bad enough, but added to that is the fact that several of the boot camp staff stood around talking and laughing while the girl begged for help and took several hours to die on the ground where she fell. The drill instructors said they thought she was faking.

This military style boot camp is exactly what a number of states are in the process of eliminating because it encourages such abuses. The staff is encouraged to be overly harsh with the juveniles and to regard them as enemies to be broken down.

In 1998, according to an article in the Arizona Republic, authorities in a California county withdrew juveniles from Arizona Boys Ranch after a Pinal County Sheriff's report revealed that one of the California juveniles (housed at the Boys' Ranch) had died of a lung condition after he was put in a control hold and then forced to do exercises as punishment.

The boy was forced to do rigorous exercise even though he repeatedly told a camp nurse that he was ill. During the last week of his life, he complained of chest pain and difficulty breathing, but was considered by the staff as a malingerer and received additional punishment when he complained.

A nurse at the Ranch examined the boy repeatedly and sent him back to do stringent exercises. After his death, he was found to have died of empyema, a buildup of fluid in the lining between his lungs and chest cavity. He also had strep and staph infections, pneumonia and chronic bronchitis. The coroner's report noted 71 cuts and bruises on his body.

The Los Angeles Times later reported that five former employees of the Arizona Boys Ranch were indicted by a grand jury as being responsible for the boy's death. The Boy's Ranch has been virtually closed. This was the second death that had occurred at the Ranch and more than 100 child-abuse complaints were filed against the Ranch in the five years before it closed. The charges against the Boys Ranch employees were eventually dismissed.

Maryland suspended its military style boot camp programs in late 1999 because of similar abuses. An article in the Jefferson City News Tribune reported that boot camp investigators found that guards administered beatings rather than sticking to military discipline. The pattern of abuse was found to exist shortly after the first three boot camps in Maryland opened in 1996.

The investigation of the boot camp program began after juvenile justice advocates had spent years arguing that the camps demonstrated a propensity to violence.

Jann Jackson, executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth was quoted in the News Tribune as saying: "This was a time bomb waiting to happen. For three years this administration was touting its 'get tough' boot camps when from the first week the camps opened there was clear evidence that the tactical officers were manhandling youths."

In early 2000, Georgia overhauled its boot camp program after a Justice Department investigation reported that the program was overcrowded and so dangerous that it bordered on being unconstitutional.

In the midst of deaths, beatings, abuse and allegations, the Koch Crime Institute in Topeka, Kansas released a report indicating that recidivism rates for boot camps across the country are slightly higher than for traditional correctional facilities.

Several years ago, my colleague Cynthia brought a lawsuit against a local county boot camp, run by the Sheriff's office. The legal issues she was allowed to contest were whittled down by the judge to almost nothing, and the cases against a number of defendants simply dismissed. It took Cynthia a long time to get over it, and from her reaction to the case of the girl in North Dakota, it's plain she hasn't completely gotten over it. "I kept thinking of all the abuse those boys went through." She wrote.

Surely we can do better than this.