ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Boot Camp Approach Offers Option to Abyss of Prisons : Penology: The state’s first Marine Corps-style facility for juvenile offenders graduated its first class in January in a program worth studying.

Today California has more people behind bars than any state in the nation. But we haven’t really begun to address the tremendous costs of incarceration. It costs more to go to jail than to Stanford. But the criminals continue to return after “graduation.”

That’s not because prison life is easy. Chuck Colson, an author and leader in the prison reform movement, says he has seen better morale in some Soviet prisons than in American ones.

About 75% of prisoners in California will never learn self-discipline. They will never learn to support themselves. They will commit one crime after another. All at taxpayers’ expense.

Between 1983 and 1993, the state’s prison population exploded, rising from 25,000 to 107,000 and providing a major justification for the 1991 tax increase. Prison costs, just 2% of the general fund budget a decade ago, now swallow up 6% of the budget. By 1996, the inmate population is expected to exceed 132,000.

In the meantime, unsuccessful rehabilitation methods come and go. A highly touted program called “Scared Straight,” for example, actually increased recidivism rates among juveniles. The youths weren’t “scared straight.” They were scared stiff--of personal responsibility.

Enter military discipline. The state’s first Marine Corps-style “boot camp” for juvenile offenders graduated its first class in January at the Preston School of Industry, a low-security prison in Ione, Calif. Another camp is scheduled to open in Whittier this October.

At the boot camp in Ione, 60 non-violent first-offenders give up free time, TV, newspapers, cigarettes and interaction with other inmates, in return for a shorter sentence. Their heads are shaved. They spit-shine their boots and wear carefully ironed uniforms. Their 16-hour day includes marching and other military exercises learned from drill instructors.

The youths learn to work as a unit, regardless of gang affiliation. They have a powerful incentive to succeed: Dropouts (only a few so far) face a 16- to 20-month sentence or an even longer stay at grim state prisons. The boot camp program lasts only four months, but is followed by an intensive six-month parole.

It’s a baptism of fire for young, anti-social street criminals and gang-bangers. Aptly enough, the program is called LEAD, for Leadership, Esteem, Ability, Discipline.

The evaluation process will be years in the making, but some of the positive results from boot camps across the country are already in. New York saved taxpayers $220 million over five years. Only 14% of the “graduates” of these camps returned to prison within the first year after release and only 29% after the first 18 months. Prisoners in general confinement had a 48% recidivism rate.

A two-year evaluation of the Ione camp, the first of its kind in the United States, will determine just how effective the California experiment has been. But even if recidivism rates are not reduced, the program will be a success for taxpayers. Boot camps cost just 25% of regular programs.

A walk around the Ione camp reveals some emerging successes. Michael Walker, age 22, is a good example of what the military regimen can accomplish. After a few months, he lost 100 pounds. He can now run the perimeter of the camp he could barely walk before.

“I tried a lot of programs,” he told a reporter. “They didn’t help me. Everyone outside was afraid to talk to me about my problems. Here they helped me strive to be better.”

The tragedy today is that so few Michael Walkers are being enrolled. Ironically, as military bases across the state prepare to close, the plans for converting them to boot camps aren’t even on the drawing board.

We know from experience how military training has helped millions of men. While not every veteran is a model citizen, basic training in the armed forces was just the “wake-up” call that millions of them needed to help them become better, more productive citizens. But unless today’s young criminals learn that same self-discipline and pride, they will never make it outside the criminal world. We ought to give all young prisoners the boot camp they deserve and need.