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After boot camps

If sheriffs can't afford to meet new mandates, troubled teens suffer.

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.

[Last modified July 4, 2006, 00:59:06]