2005-01-13-schumer-offenders

2005-01-13-Schumer-Offenders 'boot camp'

Harrison Weblog

2005 blog

Sen. Charles Schumer

Keeping up with Jewish officeholders
Schumer urges continuation of
'boot camp' for youthful offenders

jewishsightseeing.com, Jan. 13, 2005

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says the Justice Department would make a mistake to eliminate the "boot camp" program aimed at impressing young offenders that crime doesn't pay.

He urged Attorney General John Ashcroft to "keep in place a shock incarceration program that helps first-time offenders avoid lives of crime by helping them clean themselves up and make better decisions."

Eliminating the program "could be devastating because it helps get young people on the right track and forsake a potential life of crime," the senator added in a news release issued Wednesday, Jan.12.

Officially known as the Federal Intensive Confinement Program, it involves sending youthful offenders for six months to "an intensive 'boot camp' that provides strict discipline, job training and counseling, followed by time in a community halfway house and home confinement," Schumer said.

He cited published reports quoting a US Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman that the 14-year-old Intensive Confinement Program will be discontinued. In addition, he said, court officials in Buffalo have been told not to seek shock incarceration for any more defendants.

—Donald H. Harrison