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Article
Boot Camps' Impact on Confinement
Bed Space Requirements
Do Boot Camps really impact the problem of overcrowded prisons by increasing the availability of prison space for violent offenders?
This in-depth study of four boot camps found that the impact of generating confinement bed space varied depending on design, operating choices, and other variable such as 1) probability of boot camp entrants imprisonment, 2) amount of discount time, 3) program failure rates, and 4) revocation rates.
Three of the four camps recorded reasonable savings, the fourth possibly a modest savings. Researchers cautioned that any savings must be realized on a large scale to have any significant impact. The study�s lessons learned could be applied to any confinement reduction program: 1) Study offender flow to carefully determine the size of the program, 2) enroll high-risk offenders, 3) maximize the program completion discount, 4) minimize revocation rates for noncriminal supervision breaches, and 5), realize that cost savings are unlikely unless large-scale reductions materialize.
For more information, the full abstract can be found at: http://www.ncjrs.org/rr/vol3_1/2html.
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