Grant Sought to Send Juvenile Offenders to Boot Camp

If federal funding comes through, whistle blasts and shouting drill instructors could soon govern the lives of 20 juvenile inmates from Ventura County.

Ventura County court officials said this week they hope to start sentencing juvenile offenders to a military-style boot camp in the forests of Santa Barbara County--if a federal grant can be obtained from last year’s omnibus crime bill.

A strict regimen of exercise, school, forestry work and military discipline could shake some young offenders ages 13 to 18 out of the cycle of crime and give them a direction in life, officials say.

Those who follow the program and earn their stripes--literally winning bars on their uniform sleeves for good behavior--could even be released early, officials said.

“I’m very excited about it,” said Superior Court Judge Steven Z. Perren. “The hope is we can do what we’re supposed to be doing, which is getting them out of the community where they pose a hazard, [and] some of these kids will get skills they never even expected to learn.”

The boot camp plan is not entirely new.

Though Ventura County juvenile inmates would wear camouflage uniforms and obey military-style orders for the first time, the county was sending youths serving time for nonviolent crimes to the Santa Barbara County Probation Department’s work camp near Lake Cachuma as late as 1976.

But that year, Ventura County withdrew its inmates from the camp near Lake Cachuma, sending them instead to the Colston Youth Center in Ventura, which offers counseling and rehabilitation programs.

Now, juvenile halls all over California are growing more crowded, and officials are looking for a safety valve--somewhere they can try to rehabilitate nonviolent offenders while still keeping the violent ones locked up, said Frank Woodson, Ventura County’s chief probation officer.

“We’re experiencing extreme overcrowding here,” said Woodson.

The waiting list for Colston is 10 to 20 inmates long, he said, adding that the boot camp would relieve pressure on Ventura County Juvenile Hall, where youths are offered few such programs.

About 56 juvenile inmates from Santa Barbara County courts live and work at the Los Prietos Camp for up to six months, said Craig Hamlin, deputy chief probation officer for Santa Barbara County.

They study, clean campgrounds, do forestry work and march in step from place to place under the eyes of civilian corrections officers.

Ventura County hopes to take advantage of the camp through a $1-million grant it is applying for along with the counties of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. A total of $20 million is available through the crime bill for boot camps, Woodson said.

“We decided it would be very economical for all three counties to go together,” he said.

Woodson said he also would ask the county Board of Supervisors in the next few weeks to approve the idea. With both federal and local approval, Woodson estimated that the first inmates could be sent in about 18 months.

Meanwhile, the camp would add a gym and dorm space, expanding to 80 beds. One-half would be for the youths in the existing Santa Barbara County work camp program. The rest would serve as boot camp barracks for youths from Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, Hamlin said.

Boot campers would rise at 6:30 a.m., exercise, shower and eat, then spend six hours in classes, Hamlin said.

At 2 p.m., they would be formed into squads and marched off to three hours of work duty ranging from cleaning bathrooms at the camp to digging firebreaks in the surrounding Los Padres National Forest.

All of it would take place under severe military-style orders from officers hired for their military background, he said.

Sentences also would be shorter.

Instead of six months, youths would be sentenced to boot camp for three to four months--or less, depending on how well they can follow orders and earn higher ranks, Hamlin said.

Boot camps have already worked for some inmates in Los Angeles County, Woodson said.

Some youths respond well to the strict discipline, eventually gaining pride in keeping their uniforms straight and their barracks clean, he said.

“It does seem to instill a sense of discipline in many of the kids,” he said. “But . . . you’d have to supplement it with vocational training, remedial education and counseling. If you put those things in it too, then you’ll have a better success potential when these young men go out and back to their communities.”