Boot camps — those get-tough facilities that became a popular juvenile detention option in the 1980s and 1990s — seemed to be on their way out even before the acquittal of guards in the death of a teenaged Florida inmate last week, the Washington Post reports. Repeated allegations of brutality, as in the Florida case, has led prison officials to dump the concept.
In the Florida death, Martin Lee Anderson, a black 14-year-old, was allegedly beaten, dragged and subjected to ammonia
fumes by an seven white group of guards on his first day in a Florida boot camp facility. Martin died shortly afterward, but on Friday, an all-white jury, deliberated only 90 minutes before finding the guards not guilty of manslaughter. “You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little black boy, nothing happens,” said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Martin’s parents.
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202206.html