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Hard Cases: Teen boot-camp leader's devotion breeds success
Tuesday, September 07, 1999 By Jack Kelly, Post-Gazette National Bureau
Third of a series
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- It is well before dawn, but the 23 young men with the shaved heads have been in the parking lot of the Cumberland County courthouse for nearly an hour, drilling and doing calisthenics.
They are being put through their paces by Roger Redd, a retired Army sergeant major. Now a bailiff in the court of Judge E. Lynn Johnson, Redd is the founder and driving force behind the Cumberland County Physical Training Program. CCPTP is stenciled in black on the youths' Army-style sweatsuits.
All of the young men, who range in age from 16 to 21, are convicted felons -- most for breaking and entering, though several for assault or drug possession. All are first-time offenders; all are on probation. (Some other classes are made up of youths on release from the county jail.)
The group meets at 5 a.m. two or three weekday mornings a week, and at 5 a.m. on Saturdays, for 15 weeks. Those who complete the program have their time on probation reduced and, in some cases, the record of their convictions expunged.
The weekday meetings consist of drill and calisthenics, interspersed with minilectures on personal responsibility, the dangers of drugs and the importance of self respect.
The sessions end at 7 a.m. so that Redd can get to his job as bailiff, and his students to school or work. The Saturday sessions, which usually involve some form of community service, run until midday.
Self-respect comes through accomplishment, and accomplishment comes through discipline, Redd tells his charges. He asks each to stand up and say what he hopes to be. Several want to attend college. One wants to be an electrician, another a soldier.
"Every one of you has goals that are important," Redd said. "But it takes discipline to achieve goals. Discipline and self-respect. Let's say it."
The boys shout, "DISCIPLINE!" at the top of their lungs.
Redd emphasizes the lesson by instantly correcting any infraction, however mild.
On the command "left face," one young man mistakenly turns right. His eyes roll; he knows what's in store.
"Get down and push," Redd said, not unkindly. The boy drops and starts doing pushups.
Despite a wave of enthusiasm for juvenile boot camps in the early 1990s, no other camp in the country can claim anything approaching the success of Redd's program, according to Cumberland County authorities.
Boot camps cost less than other residential corrections programs, but researchers have found that graduates are more likely to be re-arrested than young people sent to traditional juvenile facilities.
Redd's is certainly the cheapest boot camp in the country. The cost to Cumberland County is zero. Redd donates his labor. The West Fayetteville Rotary Club buys the sweatsuits. And the training facility, summer or winter, rain or shine, is the courthouse parking lot.
Though his method is that of the drill sergeant he once was, Redd's attitude is more like that of a parent. He shouts out commands, but does not shout at the boys individually, or call them names.
"It's wrong to do what you did," Redd told the boys. "But you can overcome it. You can succeed. You can become what you want to be in life."
A highly decorated veteran who was badly wounded in Vietnam, Redd is also a proud parent. The oldest of his three boys, a graduate of Notre Dame, is an engineer for BMW in Germany. The middle son, a graduate of the University of Indiana, is a North Carolina state trooper. The youngest son, valedictorian of his high school class, was one of only two students from North Carolina to be selected for national science camp. He is a sophomore at North Carolina State University and plans to be a biochemist.
Many of Redd's young charges, the vast majority of whom come from single parent, female-headed households, come to look on him as the father they never had.
As today's drill comes to an end, a young woman comes up to him and gives him a big hug.
"It's so good to see you," gushed Leslie Moore, 25.
Seven years ago, Moore was the first woman to graduate from Redd's boot camp.
"It did me a world of good," Moore said. "He changed my whole life. Sgt. Redd is like a father to kids who don't have fathers."
Prodded by Redd, Moore went to college. She now owns her own cleaning business and is engaged to marry a deputy sheriff.
Judge Johnson remembers the day three years ago when three strapping Marines came into his courtroom and took turns hugging his bailiff. All were graduates of Redd's program and among the 265 graduates who have entered the armed forces.
"It's remarkable the difference between the first time you see them and when you see them at graduation," Johnson said.
Not all Redd's students succeed; some are dropped if they can't adjust or miss too many sessions. Most of these go directly to the county jail or state prison.
Nevertheless, Redd's success rate is remarkable, a relative handful of failures in seven years. The recidivism rate after 18 months for most youth corrections programs ranges between 50 percent and 70 percent.
"God gave us free will, so we can make our own decisions," Redd told the boys. "He gave us a conscience. If you don't use that conscience, you'll do something crazy."
His devotion to juvenile offenders costs Redd more than time. He takes each class out to dinner at a restaurant at least once to teach proper table manners. And each class, at his expense, also takes a field trip, usually to visit the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington Cemetery.
Part I: Turning around kids in trouble
Part II: Teens Find Themselves in the Wilderness
Redd has succeeded where lavishly funded programs have failed.
In the early 1990s, the federal government funded three experimental juvenile boot camp programs in Mobile, Ala.; Denver, and Cleveland. The last, in Cleveland, shut down in June 1998.
"We have both empirical and anecdotal evidence that boot camp youth ... made physical fitness, educational and attitudinal gains," The National Institute for Justice reported in February 1995. "The youth whom we interviewed expressed confidence they had made considerable changes in their lives and that their behavior trajectory would be different from what it had been prior to boot camp."
But, they added: "What appeared to be a promising prognosis at the conclusion of boot camp disintegrated during aftercare. All three programs were plagued by high attrition rates for noncompliance, absenteeism and new arrests during the aftercare period."
In a study of Colorado's Regimented Juvenile Training Program (not the federally funded boot camp in Denver), a state agency found that six months after graduation "42 percent of the RJTP group had new charges, compared with 27 percent of the probation-only group; 30 percent of the detention group, and 24 percent of the committed [to state correctional facilities] group."
David Stence, a retired Army sergeant who runs the boot camp in Pueblo, Colo., said his program would be more effective if it were followed by residential aftercare.
"Eighty percent of the boys who come here experience an attitude change," Stence said. "But then they go back to the 'hood,' and it's all lost."
Arlene Matchett, who was program director for Camp Routson, the juvenile boot camp near Cleveland, said the program never had a fair chance.
Boot camps are supposed to be shock therapy for first offenders, but "some of them had 10-12 felonies when they were sent here," Matchett said. "I don't think we ever received a first-time felon. When you look at the type of kids who came here, we were set up for failure."
The first 18 classes at Camp Routson had significantly higher recidivism rates than the regular Cuyahoga County Division for Youth Services corrections program, but the rate after six months for the final 12 classes was virtually identical, Matchett said. "When you consider that the DYS program is six months long, and ours was just 90 days, that's not so bad."
Matchett was skeptical that family-based treatment, which is what the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court intends to substitute for Camp Routson, would be effective for many of the youngsters who had been sent there.
"We had one kid, his father was in prison. His mother had just gotten out of prison for felonious assault. His big sister is a lieutenant in a gang. Family counseling won't help him. His family is the problem," she said.
Tomorrow: Bad little boys should be made to be cowboys: horses help teach kids how to be better people.
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