Sheriff Seeks Boot Camp for Drug Convicts

Wake-up is 4:30 a.m. and a long workout regimen follows in the mountain morning chill of extreme eastern San Diego County, where a typical day is crammed from sunup to sundown with drug counseling, vocational training, hard work, barked orders and more exercise.

Welcome to Sheriff Jim Roache’s plan for mandatory punishment of first-time, nonviolent drug offenders: a minimum- or medium-security substance-abuse treatment “boot camp,” where jail and a criminal record could be avoided after a successful six- to eight-week stay.

Not that it would be easy. In other boot camps across the country--centers of so-called “shock incarceration”--the haranguing and screaming, similar to that found in military basic training, continue from morning to night, and every inmate is open to inspection each and every moment.

In addition to the hard work, Roache is looking at a treatment center where someone can be exposed to a full range of public health and social services, mental health treatment, individual or group counseling sessions and other education.

“We want to add some guidance and direction to people’s lives,” he said. “What we’re looking at is motivation, self-esteem and substance-abuse education.”

Although a list of important questions about the camp, such as its location, cost and timetable, are still to be answered, the Sheriff’s Department is seeking a share of a $25-million grant now contained in an appropriations bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and pending before the Senate.

The money is specifically identified to “establish, operate and support” boot camp prisons.

Roache said he has discussed the idea of locating the camp near the community of Boulevard, 67 miles east of San Diego near the Imperial County line, with Imperial County’s sheriff. Both counties could operate the boot camp, he said, far from populated urban centers.

“We want to be in extreme East County in a very strict, regimented environment like the mountains,” said Dan Greenblat, a special assistant to Roache. “You get up early, you exercise, you go to classes where you learn to say no to drugs. You go to bed at the end of the day very tired.”

Within San Diego County, the sheriff wants to assemble a multi-agency staff, including county mental health representatives, judges, the Probation Department, law enforcement officials and drug experts, to figure out how the boot camp could be established.

Roache has an overriding reason for wanting the boot camp: The county must keep its six jails under a court-ordered cap of 3,829 inmates, and the figure is hovering at 3,700 this week. Roache has said that he will go to jail himself rather than release felons before they are supposed to be set free.

With a boot camp in place, Roache figures to ease somewhat the strain of a jail population that includes first-time offenders.

Although he believes the boot camps would be an attractive alternative to jail, the county has had problems in recent years getting first-time offenders to attend drug-diversion programs set up to do essentially the same thing: wipe clear a criminal record while offering rehabilitative help.

Boot camps have seen mixed results since they were introduced in 1983. About 15 camps are operating in 11 states but none in California. Although they save valuable prison space, critics say they do little to rehabilitate those who pass through them.

A study by the National Institute of Justice determined that the recidivism rates for “shock incarceration” inmates are about the same as for those who serve their sentences in prison. Since inmates serve shorter terms in boot camps, however, the cost of housing them is less.

The study also concluded that few states provide follow-up treatment once inmates are released from boot camps. In most states, judges or state corrections officials decide who will participate in “shock incarceration”; the program is not mandatory anywhere.

Greenblat of the Sheriff’s Department says the strong authoritative framework of the boot camp may not work with everyone, but, “with the right inmate, it might have have a long-term lifestyle impact.”

“Consider the military boot camp,” he said. “It takes about eight to 14 weeks to change the mind-set of a new recruit. Here it might take about a month to change the mind-set of a person who has not been exposed to another type of environment.”

In this case, the small-time or first-time drug dealer is targeted for six to eight weeks.

“These are people who may still be salvageable from outright crime,” Greenblat said. “This may be the last, best effort to pull someone from the brink.”