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Published Sunday, July 2, 2006
 

Polk Boot Camp Last One in State:
Program has turned young criminals "into young productive citizens," sheriff says

By Dana Willhoit
The Ledger

LAKELAND -- As of this weekend, Polk is the only county in the state still operating a boot camp program.

Except it's not called a boot camp any more, it's the STAR program, which stands for Sheriff's Training and Respect.

After the Jan. 6 death of a teenager at a Bay County boot camp, critics demanded reforms of the boot camps' "scare them straight" approach, and Gov. Jeb Bush signed a new law that eliminated the boot camp model and required instead that the facilities comply with the newly created STAR program.

Saturday marked the first day of the new program in Polk County.

At the time of teenager Martin Lee Anderson's death, there were five boot camps operating in Florida. The Bay County boot camp closed shortly after Anderson's death, and the remaining camps have closed one by one, with several sheriffs saying that the STAR program added too many rules and regulations and cost too much to run efficiently.

On Thursday, Pinellas County Sheriff Jim Coats abruptly closed his agency's boot camp program and transferred all of its juvenile offenders to other facilities.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said that because Polk runs the largest boot camp in the state, it benefits from economies of scale.

"The biggest cost to any of these programs is labor," he said. "But it takes the same basic number of administrative staff whether you have 30 beds or 100 beds."

Among the superficial changes the new program will require are new uniforms and a change in terminology. Formerly, the juvenile offenders in the program were called recruits; now they are called cadets.

The more substantial changes call for more checks and balances to protect the youth in the program.

Previously, the program called for a physical exam for all of the youth before they enter; now it also calls for one to be done when they are ready to leave.

Also at the end of the program, the youth will be asked if they were physically or psychologically abused during the program.

If they say no, they will have to sign a statement to that effect; if they say yes, there will be an investigation by the inspector general and by the administrative investigations section of the Sheriff's Office.

For the first year of the STAR program, the state will conduct quarterly examinations of the program, after which they will be annual.

Judd thinks there are too many new rules and regulations in the STAR program.

"In my estimation, between the Legislature and the Department of Juvenile Justice, we have overreacted," he said.

Despite all this, Judd feels the program is worth keeping. "The reason we stay with it is because we have seen young criminals in our program turn into young productive citizens," he said.

Material from the St. Petersburg Times was used in this story. Dana Willhoit can be reached at dana.willhoit@theledger.com or 863-802-7550.

 

 

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