ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the emergence of a rash of boot camps across a number of western countries. Touted by various governments as the latest great penal hope, boot camps have proliferated in the wake of calls to ‘get tough’ on crime. Boot camps are symptomatic of a changing penal philosophy in which antiquated and recycled ideas of punishment have percolated into the latest round of attempted crime reduction. The functions of policing and other forms of regulation and control therefore have to be relocated to various sites in the social body, most notably the family, school and neighbourhood. The discursive practice of responsibilisation has been applied to juvenile offenders. During the period of intensive training inmates are subjected to paramilitary discipline aimed at building ‘self discipline, responsibility, self-esteem and team work by employing military structure, discipline and physical fitness training’. There is certainly no shortage in the number of empirical studies on rates of recidivism among former boot camp detainees.
