The only thing more satisfying to some people thansanctimoniously sermonizing about miscreants who haven’t led proper lives isscreaming it right in their faces, calling them maggots and vermin.
We’ve seen the model in films like Stanley Kubrick’sFull Metal Jacket where boot campinstructors put military recruits through dehumanizing and degrading drills to preparethem for rewarding jobs as cannon fodder.
These questionable methods of training anddiscipline don’t transfer well to civilian life because the people who getcoerced into such programs are usually those who already have had far morebrutality in their lives than anyone needs.
The last thing we should want is to dehumanize themfurther.
Unfortunately, some incarceration facilities are notcontrolled by corrections professionals, but by posturing, tough-guypoliticians such as Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio andMilwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, attemptingto avoid any county responsibilities that could interfere with his race forgovernor, recently transferred administration of the county’s House ofCorrection to Clarke, who is elected separately.
Attacking Successful Programs
Clarke, a former police officer with no backgroundin corrections, immediately demonstrated his lack of knowledge by attackingeducation, drug and alcohol treatment and job training programs under hisjurisdiction.
Because his own department’s statistics showedoffenders who went through such programs had lower rates of recidivism thanthose who did not, Clarke could only try to discredit those programs bycounting arrests for minor offenses that never went to trial or resulted inacquittal.
District Attorney John Chisholm and Chief JudgeJeffrey Kremers, county law enforcement professionals who care about reducingcrime, diverted money from their own budgets to continue successful educationand treatment programs.
If Clarke cared about community safety, he wouldcelebrate and expand such programs instead of trying to discredit them.
Studies show 60% or more of offenders released backinto the community without such programs commit new crimes while the recidivismrate for offenders who receive drug treatment or job training can be less thana third of that.
Having failed to shut down programming that reducescrime, Clarke is trying a different tactic. Counting on his right-wingtalk-radio friends to support treating people at the bottom like dirt, Clarkeis beginning a brand-new boot camp program he hopes to expand to replace otherprograms.
Clarke calls it DOTS for Discipline, Order, Trainingand Structure. Like Arizona Sheriff Arpaio, Clarke likes to experiment withdifferent humiliating patterns of jumpsuits for inmates. An appropriate newuniform for this one might be clown suits with polka dots.
Instead of staffing the unit with professionalstrained in education or treatment, Clarke seems to consider experience asmilitary drillmasters the most important qualification for deputies assigned toprepare offenders for success in the outside world.
After all, most jobs in the real world requiremarching in step and counting cadence.
Although Clarke has been extremely vague about thedetails of his boot camp, he’s indicated it will include 5 a.m. wakeup calls,early morning runs, fitness training and work details.
Clarke also mentioned education and job training,but it’s not clear who would provide such classes since those are the programshe would prefer to see phased out and replaced with boot camps.
Clarke’s emphasis on physical fitness is admirable,but he seems to forget who it was who eliminated fitness programs for theincarcerated in the first place.
It was conservative politicians like himself, eggedon by right-wing radio, who swept through corrections facilities and removedgyms and weight-training equipment.
They said they didn’t want offenders to developbigger muscles than the guards. Seriously. That was the public justification.
There are very good reasons why most boot campprograms around the country have been discredited. By emphasizing yelling atpeople and harsh physical treatment, they are an open invitation for abusivepersonalities in authority to cross the line.
But, most important, they show very little success.Most studies show little difference in recidivism between those who go throughboot camp programs and those who go through no programming at all.
What does work is drug and alcohol treatment, G.E.D.education and job training, the positive programs Clarke disdains.
Before the recession brought most hiring to ascreeching halt, Wisconsin Community Services had an amazing record at thecounty of connecting hard-to-employ incarcerated offenders to real jobs.
Boot camps provide far less positive support andtools for people who want to successfully change their lives, but Clarke knowsit will be several years before poor results demonstrate that.
In the meantime, it will be such fun to shout inpeople’s faces that they are disgusting insects.
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