Boot Camps, The Real Thing or Just Another Piece of Bologna?

Thousands of dollars every year are spent on correctional programs, but are they well spent? “ Boot camps would have to have hundreds of bed and stay would be limited to three months or the programs would be pointless” (Parent 91). As a taxpayer, with statistics and current data put before us, one would have doubts as to the dollars being spent on this program. How can a program that is filled with doubts succeed to help the youth if it can’t even convince others of its achievements?  Boot camps can only reduce correctional coasts if participants are selected from the population already qualified for incarceration. Accordingly, by boot camps targeting those already qualified for incarceration they believe as though they are doing taxpayers a favor. However, boot camps should be able to put taxpayers dollars to good use without restrictions of any kind. Therefore, with the information put forth, one can see that boot camps tend to be more costly with less valuing results.

The perceived job of juvenile boot camps is to help correct the life styles of troubled youth criminals. But are they really doing the job? It is known that delinquents change their behavior when services build on their strengths and meet their needs. With boot camps, the youth tend to deny the program and end up falling back into the same life styles. With more direct and individual related programs that specify to the youths needs, one may see greater as well as longer-term results.  

Boot camps create a group mentality to survive as an individual. But do not create and individual to survive as an individual.  They do not support individuality or deal with what might have been the problem at hand. Not all criminal youths created their own fallbacks, but were lead down that path by family members down falls. Youths need to be given individual attention as to self-esteem, inner feelings, and the ability to work through problems. Positive reinforcement and continual positive out comes along with a positive environment tend to create greater independent youths.

Even though youth boot camps now seem to be a growing and popular solution to youth crime, they may not be the best long-term or cost efficient solution.  As of today, there are many other programs that can be utilized to solve this growing problem of youth crime. Many of these other programs deal with helping youths to clean up their acts and teach them to be more responsible adults as well as training them for a future of a crime free life. These programs help to stop the problem before it may begin. First and foremost, boot camps do not lessen the youth crime rate. Next, they have become more costly as time goes by and last; teens tend to show no improvement after finishing the program.