ms. Arizonas program began in January 1990 but closed in the fall of 1996. The annual cost of the program was $1.5 million more than a traditional state prison and 70% of the 1,253 participants during the first three years were back in custody within four to seven years. Boot camps have also shut down in California and New Hampshire. New Hampshires program, which began in 1990, shut down because of a lack of inmates. Its recidivism rate of 37% was similar to that at New Hampshires prisons. According to the states Department of Correction, the small state population and competing sentencing options made the camp ineffective (Allen 1997).To test the effectiveness of boot camps, the NIJ funded a study of boot camps in eight states: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The study compared boot camp graduates with demographically similar offenders who were eligible for the programs but instead served time in conventional prison. The study, released in 1996, reached the following conclusions.The first conclusion that they arrived at was that boot camp incarceration had a positive impact on the attitudes of participants compared to regular inmates during incarceration. The findings were consistent across the sites despite differences in the programs. The authors concluded that the change in attitude is likely a result of the camp atmosphere and not the additional treatment or therapy in some states. Second, Boot camp graduates did not adjust to community supervision more positively (with the exception of one state) than offenders who failed at boot camp, were released from prison, or placed on probation. Demographics, offense characteristics, criminal history, and supervision intensity were more closely related to positive adjustment. Thirdly, the common boot camp components did not reduce recidivism. Some of the statistics varied due to different measures of recidivism, lengths of follow-up, and...
