In
wake of death, juvenile boot camp system is scrapped
State lawmakers voted to discard the
militaristic juvenile boot camp system and refashion it to
emphasize treatment rather than fear.
April 27, 2006
BY MARC CAPUTO AND CAROL MARBIN MILLER
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
The in-your-face intimidation and
aggressive ''pain compliance'' techniques that teenager Martin Lee
Anderson suffered from boot camp guards before his death were
outlawed Wednesday by state lawmakers, who voted to rename the
facilities and demilitarize them to make them emphasize treatment
rather than fear.
The Martin Lee Anderson Act bans the
use of stun guns, pepper spray, pressure points, mechanical
restraints and psychological intimidation unless a child is a threat
to himself or others.
The act, proposed first by Miami
Beach lawmaker Gus Barreiro, seeks to clone Florida's most
successful boot camp, in Martin County, which stresses positive
thinking, counseling and community service.
''It's sad a young man had to die for
us to come to this kind of conclusion. We can say now, when we leave
to go home, that we changed the mind-set of how we're going to deal
with young people in the state of Florida,'' said Sen. Tony Hill, a
Jacksonville Democrat and leader of the state's black caucus.
The legislation, a part of the state
budget, also boosts the new program by $32.6 million. Approved
Wednesday by a joint House-Senate committee, the bill will likely
pass both chambers easily, though some senators initially balked at
making the changes and instead wanted to study boot camps.
Barreiro said no. The Republican
representative proposed the changes to the boot camps, of which
there are four in Florida, after Martin's death.
''A kid is dead. It's one death too
many. There's nothing to study. Unfortunately, this all came too
late for Martin,'' Barreiro said.
The boot camps have been under
scrutiny since Jan. 5, when Martin, 14, died hours after he was
punched, kneed and manhandled by a group of guards at a Panama City
boot camp, where he had been sent as punishment for joyriding in his
grandmother's car.
A videotape of the incident, made
public after The Miami Herald and CNN sued under the state's public
records law, caused an avalanche of outrage across the nation as
viewers watched the teen get roughed up by eight men. The four
sheriffs who run the remaining camps say many of the techniques seen
in the tape -- commonplace at the Panama City facility -- were not
permitted at their facilities.
The boy's death, together with the
emotional public reaction, already has wrought significant changes.
Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen,
who ran the boot camp, shuttered his program, saying the microscopic
scrutiny of his camp had made it impossible to operate. And last
week, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Guy Tunnell
resigned, several days after The Miami Herald reported he had
written several cozy e-mails to McKeithen even as his agency was
investigating McKeithen's boot camp. Tunnell also got in trouble for
jokingly referring to civil rights leader Jesse Jackson as Jesse
James and to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama as Osama bin Laden.
Martin's death is under investigation
by Mark Ober, the Tampa state attorney named special prosecutor by
Gov. Jeb Bush, as well as the FBI and federal prosecutors in
Tallahassee. Ober is awaiting the results of a second autopsy
performed on the teen.
KEY POINTS OF ACT
With the Panama City camp closed,
lawmakers have diverted its money to the other camps and boosted
bottom-line spending to $10.6 million. The Martin Lee Anderson Act
also establishes a seven-member commission to independently review
the Department of Juvenile Justice's programs. Juveniles would have
an extensive physical exam and access to an abuse hot-line telephone
number. The act also mandates more training for staff at the camps,
which will now be called Sheriff's Training and Respect Academies.
State Attorney General Charlie Crist
has asked for a review of some former cases of the Bay County
medical examiner, Dr. Charles Siebert, who determined Martin died of
sickle cell trait, not his rough handling by guards.
Siebert, who is vigorously defending
his professional findings, said Crist was responding to politics,
and has called the attorney general's move a ``witch hunt.''
Gov. Jeb Bush -- who has questioned
the autopsy result, saying it ''defied common sense'' -- has
signaled he approves of the boot camp changes.
`DOESN'T WORK'
Martin County Sheriff Bob Crowder
praised the Legislature, but expressed concern that the tight-fisted
lawmakers and the DJJ have not fully funded many aspects of the
juvenile justice system, including his camp, which he is shutting
down. Still, he said, the state rightly decided to move away from
aggressively handling youth.
''The in-your-face intimidation
doesn't work,'' he said. ``It not only hurts the kids, it's
stressful on the staff. No one wants to spend all day pushing kids
and yelling at them.''
MORE TO BE DONE
Critics of the state's juvenile
justice agency say much remains to be done.
State Rep. Dan Gelber, who helped
spark the campaign for change with Barreiro when both men described
Martin's ordeal to The Miami Herald after viewing the tape, said he
was not ''celebrating'' the new law because it highlights a pressing
concern: The DJJ seems capable of improving only following the death
of a child and the outrage of lawmakers.
''I'm not sure the department has
convinced anybody it's capable of conducting adequate oversight,''
Gelber said, noting a recent Herald report that showed DJJ officials
had been aware of 180 incidents of physical force against youths in
Bay County but failed to raise any red flags.
''This is the same point we've always
been at with the Department of Déj&gravea; Vu,'' said Gelber, a
Miami Beach Democrat. ``We are implementing constant reforms to
compensate for the absence of oversight. We shouldn't operate that
way. It shouldn't take a child's death to focus on an area that
should have been previously scrutinized.''
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