NCJ Number
169209
Journal
Social Justice Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1995) Pages: 25-48
Date Published
1995
Length
24 pages
Annotation
The return of military gestures in contemporary penal practices such as boot camps is an exercise in nostalgia rather than an indication of penal policy and patterns for the future.
Abstract
There are a number of indications that the boot camp is not a direct transfer from a military regime presumed to be effective in modifying undisciplined and irresponsible behaviors. Studies conducted by the military itself since the 1970's have suggested that the classic boot camp model is counterproductive for many of the military's own goals. The new training model emphasizes such things as health and stress reduction. Thus, the military, the model for the boot camp, is a "remembered" military that draws upon a nostalgic memory of a time of ordered discipline and obedience. Further, there is no evidence that military-style discipline is becoming a more general social qualification. Critics of boot camps have noted that whereas military boot camp is the prelude to a relatively long period in a military that reinforces boot camp behaviors, the penal boot camp is a relatively short-term experience for young men who will return to the same communities where they operated as criminals. Since the boot camp is a willful nostalgia that seeks a return to an imagined past that produced disciplined and obedient young men, it will not prove to be a penal paradigm for the future. Through nostalgia, boot camps provide an infusion of meaningfulness for practices that can no longer find sustenance in real external referents. 43 notes and 50 references