Report by State : 83% Repeat as Offenders After Leaving VisionQuest

About 83% of San Diego County juvenile delinquents sentenced to the VisionQuest wilderness camp have been arrested again since their release from the Arizona-based private reform program, a new state report says.

County probation officials said they were “not surprised” by the findings, which they said were similar to those in earlier reviews of VisionQuest and publicly operated probation and prison programs.

VisionQuest officials, meanwhile, described the report as “very positive” because it showed relatively lower rates of repeat convictions and it noted that, on average, youths were arrested less often after they left VisionQuest than they were before they entered the program.

The report, prepared for the Legislature by the state auditor general, is the latest in a series of studies on VisionQuest, a for-profit detention program criticized in the past for its practice of using physical confrontation to bring recalcitrant youths into line. VisionQuest and county probation officers have battled for years over the relative effectiveness of private and public probation programs.

462 Youths’ Cases Studied

The report studied the cases of 462 California youths who were sent to VisionQuest by judges statewide.

The auditors found that 143 youths, or 31%, were arrested at least once within six months after their release from VisionQuest, and 45 youths, or about 10%, were sent to state prison or the California Youth Authority for their crimes.

Of the first 213 San Diego youths sent to VisionQuest, 66, or 31%, were arrested within six months after leaving the program. A total of 176 youths, or 83%, were arrested within three years of their release from the program.

Although the report did not compare the VisionQuest numbers to those at the county’s publicly run probation camp system, it cited an earlier study by the RAND Corp., which found that 71% of youths sentenced to county camps eventually commit another crime.

‘Very Positive Report’

A VisionQuest spokesman noted that nearly 70% of San Diego participants avoided going to prison or to the California Youth Authority after their release from VisionQuest. And statewide, youths who averaged two arrests per year before going to VisionQuest were arrested an average of less than once per year after completing the program.

“We feel it’s a very positive report,” said VisionQuest spokesman Mike Cracovaner. “Our goals have always been to keep kids from being reincarcerated and to teach kids respect for themselves and others. Things like the dramatic reduction in reincarceration rates and the reduction in violent crime rates encourage us that we’re headed in the right direction.”

J. Douglas Willingham, the county’s deputy chief probation officer, said the numbers were “very close” to what the county has found in its own studies.

“We don’t see these results as being startlingly different from the program we run ourselves or what the state runs for that type of kid,” he said. “It’s not any different from our earlier numbers.”