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Polk Is Sole User Of Boot Camp's Successor
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Published: July 24, 2007
TALLAHASSEE - The sheriff's juvenile justice program that was designed after the death of Martin Lee Anderson and envisioned as a replacement for boot camps has gone largely unused.
Lawmakers did away with military-style boot camps for juvenile offenders last year after 14-year-old Anderson died after a confrontation with guards at a Panama City boot camp.
They created a replacement program, similar in its highly structured approach but with a ban on physical discipline and a focus instead on education, job training, community service and counseling.
Lawmakers set aside $10.6 million for the program, known as STAR, for Sheriff's Training and Respect.
Polk County is the only place where a sheriff's agency has tried the program.
Rep. Curtis Richardson, D-Tallahassee, said it is a good program that should be more widely used.
'There is a need for programs like STAR that serve as an important component of the continuum of services for juveniles in our state, so that we don't have kids going from literally the street to detention,' Richardson said. 'There would be something in between.'
Several sheriffs whose counties ran boot camps have said the STAR program includes too many expensive requirements and too little money, despite the $10 million allocation. Polk County received $4.4 million this year for its program.
Sheriffs in Manatee and Pinellas counties said last year that the counties wouldn't be able to do what the program required for the money the Legislature was making available.
Rex Uberman, the Department of Juvenile Justice's assistant secretary for residential services, agreed that the program isn't financially feasible for some counties.
'It's certainly legitimate for a local government to look at the expenditures and the requirements of a program and determine that they're not able to make that budget work for them,' Uberman said.
He said the program should be run only in places where officials are committed to it. Polk County recently signed a three-year contract extension to continue its STAR program.
Florida had five juvenile boot camps in January 2006, when Anderson died at the camp in Panama City. Lawmakers abolished the camps and created the STAR program during the spring 2006 legislative session.
The money allocated for the program that wasn't spent will be directed to other Department of Juvenile Justice programs, Uberman said.
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