Factors That Discriminate Between Recidivists, Parole Violators, and Nonrecidivists in a 3-Year Follow-Up of Boot Camp Graduates

The authors conducted a study of recidivism of 480 male graduates, aged 16 to 40 years, of a boot camp in the South. Discriminant analysis was used to determine what factors discriminated between three outcomes in a 3-year follow-up: (a) nonrecidivists, (b) recidivists who had committed additional crime after graduation from boot camp, and (c) parole violators. Analyses indicated that present age, age when unlawful behavior began, incarceration as a juvenile, several personality deficits, peer influence, and perceptions of boot camp merely as an expedient avenue to release discriminated between recidivists and the other two groups. Self-esteem, self-efficacy, resilience, expectations of future success, and favorable perceptions of various aspects of the boot camp experience distinguished nonrecidivists from others. Practice and policy implications of these findings are discussed. Despite the hyperbole used to describe the innovation of boot camps in the media, and to an extent the professional literature, a military approach to incarceration is not original. Rather, regimens of military discipline were introduced in the Elmira Reformatory in 1888 by Warder Zebulon Brockway (Anderson, Dyson, & Burns, 1999). For more than a century, it has been assumed that regimented discipline instills self-control (M. R. Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) in youthful offenders before they become ensnared in a criminal lifestyle (Empey, Stafford, & Hay, 1999). The genre of mandatory participation in demanding regimens aimed at instilling discipline is expected to be assimilated into the inmates’ thinking and motivation. For the first time in many inmates’ lives, they would have consistent demands, expectations, and sanctions placed on them, and the assumption seems to be that this structure would be a welcome change for persons who otherwise have lived vacillating and precarious lives (see reviews, Cronin, 1994; MacKenzie, 1997; Zhang, 1998). The official reason for correctional intervention with inmates in boot camps is rehabilitation. The primary rehabilitative goal of boot camp is to shock neophyte offenders out of a criminal lifestyle by incarceration in an austere environment with regimented drills and demanding structure (MacKenzie & Parent, 1991). Boot camps also are designed to reduce the overcrowding problem in prisons International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 45(6), 2001 711-729  2001 Sage Publications