COLUMN ONE : Last Shot to Salvage Their Lives : First-time, nonviolent offenders get a chance at redemption by going through paramilitary boot camps. Clinton has embraced ‘shock incarceration,’ but its effectiveness is unclear.

In the hills above Cottonwood the long, narrow road ends at the gate of an old military radar station. It is 5 a.m. The morning is as dark as the surrounding woods, full of snowy silence and biting cold, and the unwelcome voice that booms across the slumbering compound comes like that of an intruder.

“Come on, people, let’s get going,” the public address system rasps. “This is your wake-up.” Scores of feet hit the dormitory floor even before the last word is spoken. Lights are suddenly ablaze, toilets are flushing, cold-weather gear is laced, buckled and zipped tight. For the 250 men at Cottonwood, it is the start of another day in one of the United States’ most thriving growth industries--an industry in which the nation has not lost its competitive global edge.

Hank Corless, retired Marine Corps drill instructor, watches the men form into columns. They come shouting cadence, in spit-shined boots, down the hill from their dormitories, woolen caps pulled over shaven heads, shoulders hunched against the wind-driven stab of glacial air. Corless nods his approval. “When you consider they’re just a bunch of inmates,” he says, “they do pretty well.”

For the men--overwhelmingly white, young and drug-troubled--who stood shivering at attention that December morning, Idaho’s correctional facility at Cottonwood is life on the cusp, a last-chance shot at redemption. It is, in effect, a penal boot camp, 120 intense days of no-nonsense military discipline, drug counseling and classroom learning for first-time, nonviolent offenders, whose attitudes and lives may yet be salvageable.

First introduced in Georgia and Oklahoma a decade ago, boot camp prisons have become an increasingly popular response to the nation’s overcrowded prison system. Twenty-seven states, in addition to the federal government, use them, and President-elect Bill Clinton, impressed with the paramilitary program Arkansas set up in 1990, is advocating them as part of his anti-crime strategy.

“We are No. 1 in the world in the percentage of people we’ve got behind bars, and we’re only 13th in wages,” he said during the presidential campaign. “I want to reverse those numbers.”

The United States’ adult prison population stood at less than 200,000 in 1971. By 1991, in an age of crack cocaine and urban decay, it had soared to nearly 800,000. If juveniles are included, there are more Americans living behind bars today--1.2 million--than there are living in New Hampshire. Ironically, though, it is not increased crime that has caused the prisons to overflow.

The United States leads the industrialized world in crimes of violence and per capita prison population, but nonviolent crimes, such as theft and burglary, are proportionately higher in many European countries than in the United States. Unlike the United States, though, the probability of going to prison in, say, England, is going down at the same time its crime rate is going up.

Federal sentencing guidelines that mandate prison terms for certain offenses ranging from drug-related to white-collar crimes account in part for the soaring incarceration numbers, justice experts said.

“The probability of being arrested hasn’t changed.” said James Q. Wilson, a UCLA political scientist specializing in criminology. “The probability of being convicted hasn’t changed. But the probability of going to prison if convicted has increased. Judges are getting tougher. The judges and prosecutors are sending a higher percentage of arrested persons to prison.”

Kevin Pettinger, 20, a high-school graduate and convicted thief with a big-league drug addiction, is in his third month at Cottonwood and figures that what Idaho calls “shock incarceration” may be a blessing in disguise.

From participation in the precision drill team and the color guard he’s learned about teamwork. From the regimented days run by drill instructors in wide-brimmed hats he’s gained some understanding of self-esteem and discipline. From long group-counseling sessions he’s grappled with strategies to stay clean.

“It seems like I was always searching for something, maybe to fill that empty place,” he says, tapping his heart. “Maybe I wasn’t as close to dad as I should have been. Maybe the people I thought were friends were just acquaintances. But you start going down on drugs, and this is where it ends. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I can’t believe I’m really here, serving time in prison.”

A generation ago Pettinger would have done his time in Idaho’s old territorial penitentiary where, in 1970, the state set up the nation’s first shock incarceration program. The idea was that intense counseling combined with the fright of prison life would jolt young criminals into modifying their behavior.

The reward was an early release--but that caused jealousy among the general prison population and the young first-time offenders spent most of their time fearing for their well-being, defeating the program’s goals.

In 1974 the “shock” inmates were segregated from the general prison population and moved to the abandoned Cottonwood facility. Four years ago Cottonwood added the paramilitary overlay to the routine of counseling, education and physical labor, giving people like Pettinger the chance to complete boot camp and be placed on probation rather than having to serve a longer prison sentence.

Nearly three-quarters of all convicted felons in Idaho are sent to Cottonwood instead of to the state penitentiary. In each case the judge retains jurisdiction and can grant probation when an inmate finishes boot camp or can send him to prison to complete his sentence.

Boot camps vary from state to state. Some are noted for their strenuous physical routines and the verbal abuse officers heap on inmates. Others--like Idaho’s and New York’s--emphasize counseling as heavily as military training on the premise that pushups and close-order drills alone can produce obedience but not meaningful change in a person’s behavior or attitude.

“You need a combination of sternness and kindness to induce change and teach inmates the living skills they need on the outside,” said Gene Cwalinski, who runs Cottonwood’s drug abuse program. “I don’t hold anyone here responsible because they’re an addict or alcoholic. But I do hold them responsible for doing something about it once they find out they are.”

The military-style boot camp program is so new and the numbers involved so small--nationally about 21,000 men and women have been in shock incarceration--that an accurate assessment of its worth is premature, justice experts believe.

“But generally people are still suspicious, thinking this may just be one of those fads that comes along periodically and will disappear in a little while,” said Jerry C. Jolley, a sociologist at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Ida., who is studying boot camps.

Though a crime-weary citizenry embraces the notion of prisoners being treated like Parris Island recruits, critics say the military overlay isn’t much more than smoke and mirrors. They believe three to six months is too short a time to truly change an individual, especially when he is returned to an environment he couldn’t handle in the first place.

They point to the possibility of staff abuse. For example, five deputies have been indicted for choking and beating boot camp inmates in Harris County, Tex. And critics contend that back to the 1790s, when the warden of the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia resigned to protest overcrowding, prison reform hasn’t amounted to much.

Wrong, respond boot camp supporters. Boot camps are cheaper than prisons because of the fast turnover and shorter sentences. (New York State has saved $220 million over five years.) More important, supporters say, scores of young men and women have found in boot camp the self-respect, discipline, education and coping techniques needed to live in a society that initially contributed to their criminal activity.

“This may not be not the answer in itself, but it’s a big part of it,” said Dean Allen, Cottonwood’s deputy warden.

On the surface, Idaho would not seem to have much in common with New York, which operates the nation’s largest--and, many say, most successful--boot camp system. Idaho has one murder every 10 days, New York one every four hours; Idaho records 20 robberies per 100,000 residents, New York 544 per 100,000.

But the profile of boot camp inmates is remarkably similar in both states: They are from dysfunctional families; they were unemployed and are undereducated; their self-esteem is low, their behavior unpredictable; they don’t know how to deal with authority, and they are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

“My whole life was a mistake,” said New York boot camp inmate Ian Amritti, 33.

Graduation was finally at hand the other day for Amritti and the other 57 men and women of A Company, Third Platoon at New York’s Lakeview correctional facility, south of Buffalo. Wearing white shirts and ties, they marched silently into the gymnasium and took their seats in unison, hands on their knees. They looked straight ahead, seeing neither the families to their left who had driven up from New York City nor to their right the Lakeview staff, some of whom were there even though Thursday was their day off.

New York’s program is the longest (six months), largest (3,000 inmates a year) in the nation and the only one in which all staffers attend a monthlong course designed specifically for boot camp prison.

Supt. Ronald Moscicki, a Vietnam veteran who joins the inmates in pre-dawn physical training and seldom leaves Lakeview until 8 or 9 at night, says that just “doing pushups doesn’t make a man smart.” But shock incarceration, he believes, combined with counseling, education and follow-up supervision, does fulfill its goals, by reducing demand for bed space, thus saving money, and by treating and releasing inmates earlier than their court-mandated minimum sentences without compromising the community.

About one-quarter of New York boot camp inmates drop out of the program, voluntarily or otherwise, and end up serving their sentences in prison. But those who complete the program are more likely to stay out of prison than those who served their time in a state penitentiary or those who failed to complete boot camp: New York’s recidivism rate for those in general confinement is 48%; for boot camp graduates the rate in one follow-up study was 14% within the first 12 months of freedom and 29% within the first 18 months. The rates increase in most studies the longer a person is on the streets, indicating that the benefits of boot camp may be relatively short term.

Turning to the families at graduation, Moscicki said: “The people you are taking home this morning are not the same as they were six months ago. They’ve changed. But the streets haven’t. The streets are worse than ever, and that’s why they’re going to have to use what they’ve learned here.

“In my heart I know that out on Interstate 17 today, headed for the city, someone is going to offer one of these knuckleheads a hit (of marijuana). And he’ll take it. See, we know that. And 180 days of sweat goes down the drain. That’s why graduations make me nervous. So we’ll see. We will see.”