NCJ Number
206717
Journal
Journal of Correctional Education Volume: 55 Issue: 2 Dated: June 2004 Pages: 170-185
Date Published
June 2004
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This study examined a militaristic academy for juvenile offenders.
Abstract
A boot camp is a military style correctional facility in which inmates are subject to a highly structured and challenging regimen of physical training, in addition to vocational, educational, and therapeutic programming. Boot camps have been used in several States to shock and rehabilitate youthful offenders. This study focused on an institutional ethnography of Lakeview Academy, (Iowa) a 90 day boot camp for adolescent boys in Iowa. The goal of instrumentational ethnography is to understand the social and cultural knowledge of an institution, as it is practiced in the everyday lives of those who are members of that institution. The analysis of this article is rounded in the daily lives of the boys who are incarcerated in the boot camp. The study followed 2 cohorts totaling 17 adolescent boys through their 90-day boot camp program. Life history interviews were conducted during the first week of camp, and exit interviews were done shortly before the end of the program, with all the boys. All the boys at Lakeview learned something. Whether they primarily concentrated on being released in 90 days or on the boot camp experience as it unfolded, they all reported they felt like they were learning quite a lot. Lakeview intends to be a “shock treatment” for juvenile delinquents, but for many, it is a more comfortable place than their home environment. The boys deny the possibility that they might go to a prison in the future, and refuse to consider what prison might be like. Lakeview does not give them the window onto a probable future if they continue their criminal behaviors, but provides them an opportunity to learn new skills for a brighter future without incarceration. References