Boot camps are a political tool used by governments and politicians to lead Canadian people to believe that they are using tough measures to crack down on youth crime. According to Debates in Canadian Criminology, deterrence is held very highly in our society and many people believe that in order to solve the problem of youth crime, the law needs to be tougher on them. In reality, youth crime is the result of many factors, including a lack of social support, weak social bonds, and interactions with other people. These factors can affect anyone in society and lead them to deviance, yet criminals are frequently painted as young, male, and non-white.
Due to the complex roots of crime such as a lack of education, poverty, or interactions with criminal peers, it would make logical sense for the state to implement rehabilitative programs that employ education and counseling to address these strains that lead people to crime. However, due to our society’s obsession with deterrence, and the government’s obsession with saving money on criminals, boot camps are the preferred method.
Why are Boot Camps Ineffective?
Boot camps are ineffective and harmful towards juvenile delinquents due to their lack of rehabilitative, educational and therapeutic focus. The article "Juvenile boot camps: a descriptive analysis of program diversity and effectiveness" by Jerry Tyler notes that because boot camps rely so heavily on a military structure and emphasize the negative affects of deviant behaviour, they promote qualities such as discipline and respect, but often fail address the reasons why people committed crimes in the first place. The strict atmosphere of the camp creates a distance between the staff and the youth, which makes it even more difficult to transition into a safe environment where youth can critically deal with their issues. According to Boot Camps for Juvenile Offenders, published by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS), often times a boot camp will try to include some therapeutic programs into its regime, but neither the staff nor the youth are able to switch back and forth easily between the military organizational structure and the atmosphere of friends and trust in counseling. Furthermore, many military-style boot camps actually lack the qualified personnel to facilitate these kinds of discussions.
It is easy to imagine how positive behaviour learned in a camp might fall apart once a youth graduates from the program and has not received the necessary help to deal with what caused them to commit crime in the first place. Under the structured environment of the camp, youth will conform to pro-social standards due to the program’s emphasis on discipline and respect. However, once they get out of the camp there will be no one to directly discipline them, which brings about recidivism, as noted in "Effects of Correctional Boot Camps on Offending" by Doris Layton MacKenzie.
Alternatives to Boot Camps
Rehabilitative counseling and education is imperative to ensure that youth will continue to move away from their delinquent past once they are out of the program. In programs with a heavy emphasis on counseling, this help will be available to teenagers both during the program and during the aftercare, once they have been launched into the real world. According to "Perceived Conditions of Confinement: A National Evaluation of Juvenile Boot Camps and Traditional Facilities" by Gaylene J Styve, aftercare is essentially the youth equivalent of probation, in which they are monitored by the boot camp in the outside world for up to a year or two after release, and given the necessary support they need to stay out of crime. However, like adult probation, aftercare relies heavily on youth participation to be successful. It is very difficult for aftercare to force youth to participate; the willingness to participate must be fostered on the inside of the camp during rehabilitative sessions. When youth criminals re-offend, is often to due to the fact that they did not learn lasting pro-social behaviour under the military structure of the camp, and chose not to participate in aftercare upon release.
Data on Boot Camps
When examining empirical data, it is evident that the use of boot camps does not significantly reduce recidivism rates. In countless studies conducted by researchers, participants have shown about equal odds of recidivism in boot camps and the comparison groups. The strength of aftercare programs has shown to have a significant impact on recidivism rates. Military-style boot camps that implement a strong aftercare program generally show lower rates of recidivism compared to those camps with weaker aftercare.
In a study conducted by the United States’ Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention on the efficacy of boot camps, they found that the camp that had an overwhelming black population and the most violent offenders (the group considered by society to be in the greatest need of boot camp) actually had the lowest recidivism rate due to a very strong aftercare program with well-trained counselors and significant resources dedicated towards reintegrating the youth into society.
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