Boot Camps

Boot camps/Shock incarceration programs have gained in numbers due to the increase in non violent offenders since they were introduced in 1983 in Georgia. This institutions help to rehabilitate non violent offenders, their goals are; to cut on cost, reduce the prisons population and mostly to reduce recidivism. With their manual labor, and intensive treatment, they resemble military training from a broad point of view. There has been three generations of these camps; the first was more physical with hard labor and severe discipline unlike the next two which mostly emphasized on rehabilitation.

Some camps began accepting women in the early 90s but as this research will explain there were some unique problems brought about by the presence of women in the camps. They are basically in-prison programs that offer offenders a chance to change from their previous behaviors and altitudes. Reason for the evaluation Almost every successful organization uses performance evaluation to gauge its performance and achievements. The results obtained from the evaluation are used by the organizations decision-makers to make plans for the future in the best interests of the organization.

This will basically the organization’s\program’s efficiency and cut on cost. The biggest challenge for these boot camps is whether they will have an impact on the inmate’s live concerning the behavior and altitude, is the inmate likely to commit the same crime or a different one once he is released from these camps. Methodology This evaluation of adult boot camp is based mostly on data from site visitations, interviews, and survey responses.

The surveys were majored on the treatment of substance users and the after care services, it included; interviews through the telephone with the people responsible with managing the programs and implementing, and there was also the use of questionnaires which were mailed to administrators responsible, aftercare substance abuse providers, and the officers and trained personnel who dealt directly with the inmates. There was also visitation to at least four camps which were thought to have different\ unique characteristics.

These visitations included observations and some face to face interviews with the managers, administrators and offenders (both male and female). The key findings Reports from the survey showed that these camps have a small impact to the society in regards to drug abusers, though there is some positive change in most of the offenders on behavior and altitude, the integration into the community has failed to take effect in most of the camps. This was caused by poor inmate preparation on how he\ she can lead a good live before being released from the camp.

Women were first accepted as inmates in the 90s. This was later challenged by a research which was done in 1992 concluding that these camps were designed to accommodate males only. Despite this, women continued to be accepted but they recorded a very high number of drop outs due to stress caused by the hard labor they were being subjected to. Restricting visitations to avoid them from having children only complicated the issue because some of these women already had families and worse children.

These boot camps also did not consider that there was a more likelihood that most women inmates were not employed, thus did not prepare them for employment after their time in the camps. Though these programs seemed to have a positive impact on the offenders this did not seem to reduce recidivism. This was mostly caused by the time taken in the boot camps (mostly 100 to 130 days seemed too short to have an impact on recidivism), political influence also affected these programs in regard to treatment, and lack of proper strategies to help inmates re-enter into the community.

Survey also discovered that different camps used different methods to treat substance offenders, the mostly used was group discussions and each seemed to use personal private counseling. Most programs use staff on a contract while the others use agency staff. Of this staff it was found that only a few are not state certified. Also the numbers of offenders who were assigned to a certain specialist differed from camp to camp. Conclusions and recommendations From the survey it is clear that there have been some failures in this adult boot camps and something needs to be done by the correctional planners and practitioners.

Here are some of the recommendations that could be used to ensure that there is success in these camps; 1. To ensure that the inmate doesn’t commit another crime once he\she is released, the practitioners need to build reintegration of the inmate into the community. 2. More qualified professional personnel should be employed in these camps to deal with specific type of offenders, like substance abuse inmates need qualified personnel in order to change their behavior. 3.

Substantial discounts should be encouraged for inmates who have completed for the in time served. 4. The time spend on these camps should be reduced if the inmate is adapting the new life, this would solve the issue of population. 5. Prolonged post release supervision and unnecessary severe treatments should be dealt with to reduce recidivism. Finally, a lot of consideration should go to the structuring of the programs, poor structuring has led to idleness, increased violence and serious problems in management. References Blair B. ( 1996).

Boot Camps for Juvenile Offenders: An Implementation Evaluation of Three Demonstration : DIANE Publishing, Horowitz, I. L. (2003). Social science today: A view from the trenches. 69(7), 221. Sherman, L. W. & Strang, H. (2004, January). Verdicts or inventions? Interpreting results from randomized controlled experiments in criminology. The American Behavioral Scientist, 47(5), 575. Todd S. (2007). Boot Camp: Simon & Schuster, 235 pages Posavac, E. J. (1999). Program evaluation: methods and case studies (6th Ed,). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

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