Columns

Troubled girls find direction at camp

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published April 22, 2007

FLORAL CITY - The rate of juvenile crime in Florida and in the nation has gone down in recent years, with a striking exception: Girls.

Girls now account for about one in three juvenile delinquencies in Florida, according to the state Department of Juvenile Justice. The question is what to do with them.

This brings us to Camp E-Nini-Hassee just outside Floral City, north of Tampa Bay. The camp name means "Her Sunny Road." Most of the camp's 63 girls were sent here for juvenile offenses.

Located on 840 acres of pine and oaks, the camp is run by Eckerd Youth Alternatives and was founded by Jack Eckerd almost 38 years ago.

The girls, ages 12 to 18, rough it most of the time, sleeping under mosquito netting in open-air, wood-framed tents they have built for themselves, cooking their own meals. Most stay in camp for longer than a year.

Some of them are there for stealing cars, some for drug use. (I asked one sweet and clean-cut young woman her offense. "Crack," she answered matter-of-factly.) Some of them are there for hitting someone - a parent, a teacher, another student - the most common girls' offense.

The key to daily life in the camp is the "huddle." The girls are permanently assigned to groups of 10 or so with the same resident counselors. They sleep together, work together, eat together and learn together.

When they get up in the morning, they huddle to plan the day. When they fight, they huddle. When someone grows angry or upset, they huddle. They confront each other and make each other talk. They have grown so accustomed to the huddle that they find themselves, on their home leaves every few weeks, automatically trying to huddle with their families or friends.

I met with about 25 girls who were nearing their return home. They were poised, confident, articulate and frank.

Almost to a woman, they talked about arriving at the camp angry, defiant, thinking it was stupid and they would fake their way through it. But you can't fake it for long.

They laughed when asked what they would say, if they could reach back in time, to advise their younger versions on that first day in camp. One tall, blond older teen, soon to join the Navy, replied: "Get over yourself."

Many of the girls knew they would go home to the same challenges, especially those with dysfunctional families. One told me she regularly wrote letters to her mother, talking about what she was learning. Her mother has never answered.

The state pays the camp $88 per girl per day; the actual cost to Eckerd is more than $200 per day. The camp costs $3-million a year to run and takes in 50 or so new girls a year. To put that in perspective, there were 28,660 girls referred for offenses statewide in 2004-05.

The numbers on recidivism are hard to pin down. Some of these girls will fail again. But there is no doubt in my mind that many of them have been through an experience that will be to their lifelong benefit, and to ours.

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[Last modified April 22, 2007, 00:15:42]