Criminal Justice

Evaluation of Juvenile Boot Camps
The factors behind the creation of juvenile boot camps mirror those that led to their creation in the adult criminal justice system: an increasing incidence of youth crime, overburdened juvenile courts, and the growing costs of youth detention. According to NIJ, juveniles in custody for delinquent offenses increased 35 percent from 1978 to 1989, a period when the youth population of the United States declined by 11 percent. As a result, "satisfactory alternatives to long-term institutionalization are as welcome in the juvenile system as they are in the adult system."143
The first juvenile boot camp was developed in Orleans Parish, LA, in 1985. Since then, 10 States have begun operating juvenile boot camps, which vary in size, eligibility requirements, and programming. Due to the relative newness of these programs, a limited body of research is available on their makeup and efficacy. The American Institutes for Research (AIR), the Institute for Criminological Research (ICR) at Rutgers University, and Caliber Associates, with support from NIJ and OJJDP, have researched existing juvenile boot camp programs and have sponsored and evaluated OJJDP-funded pilot juvenile boot camp programs in three U.S. cities.
The results of telephone and mail surveys conducted by ICR, supplemented by written reports on existing programs, indicate that juvenile boot camps deem as eligible for participation "mid-range" offenders, that is, those who have been involved with the juvenile justice system before and not performed well with lesser sanctions, like probation, but who are not yet established criminals. Juvenile boot camp programs typically exclude some types of offenders, but only a very few limit eligibility to those who are nonviolent or first-time offenders.144 Most have determined that youth in their mid- to late-teens are the appropriate age group for this type of sanction.
Although the goals of reducing recidivist behavior and... [continues]

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