After boot camps: If sheriffs can't
afford to meet new mandates, troubled teens suffer
A Times Editorial
Published July 4, 2006
The law that was supposed to give juvenile offenders a better chance
to turn around their lives has instead reduced the chances, and
don't blame Pinellas Sheriff Jim Coats. Coats, faced with new state
mandates his department couldn't afford, had little choice but to
follow three other sheriffs and close his boot camp.
The result is that one month after Gov.
Jeb Bush ceremoniously signed the Martin Lee Anderson Act into law,
only one juvenile camp remains in Florida. The law that was intended
to shave the rough and dangerous edges off physically brutal boot
camps has instead all but eliminated them.
The law was born of good intentions.
Anderson, 14, died Jan. 6 after being roughed up by deputies at a
boot camp in Bay County. But the new law comes with more oversight
and new requirements that weren't fully compensated by the state's
increased reimbursement rate, and elected sheriffs can't help but
notice the explosive political climate.
Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, who
deserves credit for exposing the mistreatment in Bay County,
demonstrated some of that political bluster in his reaction to
Coats' decision. "If they don't want to be in the business the way
the state thinks they should be," he told a reporter, "then they
should find something else to do."
Barreiro's remark is cheap shot.
Coats and former Sheriff Everett Rice, now a candidate for attorney
general, showed a genuine commitment to boot camps and
rehabilitation when other sheriffs did not. Facing a discouraging
history of rearrest for juveniles in the program and an unreimbursed
$1.3-million increase for this fiscal year, though, Coats reasonably
concluded he simply could not afford to continue.
Likewise, Polk Sheriff Grady Judd,
who now runs the only remaining juvenile camp in the state, is less
than enthusiastic. "There's just so much bureaucratic overlap now,"
he said. "Making this program work is a tremendous burden."
The failures in the Bay County boot
camp were shared ones, between the sheriff who operated it and the
state Department of Juvenile Justice that largely looked the other
way. If there is to be a new beginning and a new way to turn around
the lives of some troubled teenagers, then the solutions must be
shared as well.
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