Pennsylvania's Motivational Boot Camp Program
2000 Legislative Report

Characteristics of Boot Camp Offenders

The statute that created the Boot Camp not only established eligibility criteria that an offender must meet in order to be considered for the Boot Camp Program - it also required that the judge recommend the offender for the Boot Camp Program and that the Department of Corrections make the final determination concerning which offenders are accepted into the program. The remaining portion of this section of the report will focus on the characteristics of offenders as they move through these three stages of the process. The characteristics examined are: county origin, current conviction offense, prior record, race/ethnicity, gender, and age.

County Origin of Boot Camp Offenders

Table 3 shows the number of offenders who were: 1) eligible by statute, 2) recommended by the judge, and 3) admitted into Boot Camp for the 67 counties in Pennsylvania. These numbers reflect the statewide total of offenders who fall within these three categories for the time period of July 1992 through December 1998. Table 4 provides the percentage of offenders represented in these three categories by county. These tables show that, statewide, there were 16,075 offenders who met the
statutory eligibility criteria for Boot Camp and that 2,520 of these offenders [16%] were recommended by the judge. Of those recommended, 1670 offenders [66%] were accepted by the Department of Corrections for participation in the Boot Camp Program.

Table 5 presents the ten counties with the greatest percentage of offenders who are eligible, recommended, and accepted into Boot Camp. Since the percentage reflects the county portion of the statewide total, one would expect the larger counties to have a higher percentage of offenders eligible for Boot Camp. The following ten counties comprise 64% of the offenders statutorily eligible for Boot Camp and 72% of the offenders recommended for Boot Camp: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Dauphin, Erie, Berks, Delaware, Montgomery, Lehigh, York, and Lycoming. These same counties comprise 71% of those admitted into Boot Camp with the exception of Montgomery County replacing Chester County.

Table 3. Number of Statewide Offenders Statutorily Eligible for Boot Camp, Recommended by the Judge, and Admitted to Boot Camp by DOC by County
1992-1998

*Some counties have more admissions than referrals, which is most likely a result of the DOC contaction the judge about potentially good candidates for Boot Camp who had not initially received a judicial referral. These referrals would not be reflected on the sentencing guideline forms.

**There are five cases in the eligibility category and three in the recommendation category that are missing county.

Table 4. Percent of Offenders Statewide Statutorily Eligible for Boot Camp, Recommended by the Judge, and Admitted to Boot Camp by Doc by County
1992-1998

Table 5. Top Ten Counties with Highest Percentage of Statewide Offenders Eligible, Recommended and Accepted
into Boot Camp

County-Specific Judicial Recommendations. As indicated previously, statute requires that the judge recommend an offender for the Boot Camp Program before the offender is considered by the Department of Corrections for admission into the program. As indicated above, the larger counties tend to have the higher percentage of judicial recommendations. However, in order to ascertain better which counties have a higher referral rate for Boot Camp, it is necessary to look at the percentage of offenders who are eligible for Boot Camp and recommended by the judge within each county [Table 6].

Statewide, 15.7% of those statutorily eligible receive judicial recommendations. Table 6 shows that 26 counties have a higher percentage of eligible offenders recommended by their judges. Many of the counties that have a smaller number of offenders eligible for Boot Camp have a higher percentage of judicial recommendations. The counties that have the highest judicial referral rate [>25%] are: Warren [36.9%], Potter [30%], Tioga [29.5%], Lycoming [28.7%], Juniata [27.3%], Northampton [26.8%], and Lehigh [25.1%].

In the previous section, Table 5 presented the ten counties that had the highest percentage statewide of statutorily eligible offenders. Table 6 shows that six of those counties are more likely than the statewide average to have judges recommend the offenders for Boot Camp: Lycoming [28.7%], Lehigh [25.1%], Philadelphia [21.8%], Erie [21.4%], York [18.5%], and Delaware [18.2%]. Three counties have judges who are less likely to recommend offenders to the Boot Camp: Montgomery [10.9%], Dauphin [9.9%], and Allegheny [9.8%] while Berks County is consistent with the statewide average of 16%. The following five counties have had no judicial referrals to Boot Camp: Cameron, Columbia, Forest, Huntingdon, and Montour.

County-Specific Admissions into Boot Camp. Statute also requires that once the judge identifies eligible candidates for Boot Camp, that the offender apply for admission into the program, and that the DOC make the final determination as to whom is accepted into the program. Again, as was indicated in Table 5, the larger counties tend to have the highest percentage of offenders statewide accepted into the Boot Camp. Thus, to obtain a better idea of which counties recommending offenders for Boot Camp have the highest offender acceptance rate, it is necessary to look at the percentage of offenders with judicial referrals who are accepted by the DOC within each county [Table 7].

Statewide, 66% of those recommended by the judge are accepted into the Boot Camp. Table 7 shows that seventeen counties have a higher percentage of recommended offenders who are actually accepted. The counties with the highest acceptance rate [>80%] are: Bedford, McKean, and Tioga [100%], Delaware [94.6%], Chester [92.2%], Adams [90.9%], Greene and Lackawanna [88.9%], Clarion [87.5%], Dauphin [86.5%], and York [84.6%]. However, for five of these counties [Adams, Bedford, Clarion, Greene, and McKean the number of offenders admitted to Boot Camp was ten or less between 1992 and 1998.

There are fifteen counties that have more admissions into Boot Camp than judicial recommendations: Allegheny, Bradford, Bucks, Cameron, Forest, Huntingdon, Jefferson, Lancaster, Lebanon, Luzerne,, Mifflin, Monroe, Perry, Washington, and Westmoreland. The most likely explanation for this is that the DOC does receive inmates who appear to be good candidates for the Boot Camp, though they have not been recommended by the judge. In those cases, the DOC will contact the judge to see if the judge would be willing to modify the sentencing order to provide such a recommendation. This modification in sentence is not captured on the Guideline Sentence Form, which has already been sent to the Sentencing Commission and is the source of the information concerning judicial recommendations for Boot Camp.

Table 6. Percent of Elegible Offenders Who Are Recommended by the Judge for Boot Camp.
1992-1998

*There are five cases in the eligibility category and three in the recommendation category that are missing county.

Table 7. Percent of Offenders Reccommended by the Judge and Admitted by DOC within County
1992-1998

*These counties had more Boot Camp admissions than judicial referrals.
**There are three cases in the recommendation category that are missing county,

Current Offense and Prior Record Characteristics of Boot Camp Offenders

Offenders' Current Offense. Statute prohibits offenders convicted of certain offenses from being eligible for Boot Camp. In 1990, the initial statute creating the Boot Camp provided that offenders convicted of the following offenses be ineligible for Boot Camp participation: Homicide, Rape, Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse, Kidnapping, and Robbery [F1]. In 1996 the legislature revised the statute to also exclude persons convicted of the following offenses: Sexual Assault, Aggravated Indecent Assault, Arson [places person in danger of death or serious bodily injury], Burglary [of a home with a person present], Robbery of a Motor Vehicle, and select Drug Trafficking Offenses prosecuted under the mandatory drug statute. An offender convicted of an offense involving the use of a deadly weapon as defined by the Sentencing Commission is also ineligible.

Table 8 shows that felony drug offenders represent the largest group of those eligible [37%], recommended [49%] and accepted [60%] into Boot Camp. The other two major offenses represented are felony theft and burglary. Felony theft offenders comprise 18% of those eligible and recommended, and 9% of those accepted while offenders convicted of burglary comprise 10% of those eligible, 14% of those recommended, and 11% of those accepted into Boot Camp.

Table 8. Number of Offenders Statewide who are Eligible by Statute, Recommended by Judge, and Admitted by DOC into the Boot Camp by Type of Offense

*There were 79 cases for which offense information is missing.

As indicated earlier in Table 6, about 16% of the offenders eligible for Boot Camp receive judicial recommendations. In order to get an idea of the type of offenses committed by the offenders who receive judicial recommendations for Boot Camp, it is necessary to examine how often judges recommend offenders within each offense category. Table 9 shows that among eligible offenders, judges are most likely to refer those convicted of felony drug offenses [21%] and burglary [20%].

Table 9. Percentage of Statutorily Eligible Offenders Recommended by Judges within Offense Category.

*There were 79 cases for which offense information is missing.

Table 9 also shows that drug offenders [77%] and burglary offenders [53%] have the highest acceptance rate. It is interesting to note that while offenders convicted of aggravated assault and robbery represent a small percentage of those eligible for Boot Camp [5%], their referral rates [15% and 14%, respectively] and acceptance rates [46% and 40%, respectively] are higher.

Offenders' Prior Record. While statute excludes offenders from Boot Camp if they are convicted of certain offenses, statute does not prohibit offenders from participating in Boot Camp based upon their prior record. Table 10 provides the distribution of offenders who are eligible and recommended into Boot Camp by the offender's Prior Record Score. The Prior Record Score is obtained from the Sentencing Commission data files, which only contain information on offenders who are statutorily eligible and recommended for Boot Camp. Prior record information is not available in the Boot Camp or DOC data files for offenders admitted into Boot Camp. The Prior Record Score [PRS] is used in the sentencing guidelines as a major factor determining appropriate sentencing recommendations and is based upon the number and severity of prior convictions, with a 6 representing the most serious prior record. Table 10 shows that, while about one-third of the Boot Camp candidates have no prior record, the majority of people who are eligible [68%] and recommended for Boot Camp [69%] do have some type of prior record.

Table 10. Number Of Statewide Offenders Statutorily Eligible for Boot Camp and Recommended by the Judge
by Prior Record Score *

*There were 15 offenders missing PRS at the eligibility stage and 1
offender missing PRS at the recommendation stage.

Table 11 shows the percentage of eligible offenders recommended by the judge within each of the prior record score categories. These findings indicate that prior record does not appear to deter judges from recommending an offender for Boot Camp as the percent of judicial recommendations within each PRS category is fairly similar, ranging from 14% for offenders with a PRS of 5 to 20% for offenders with a PRS of 4. Further, judges are as likely to recommend an offender with no prior record as one with a PRS of 6 [15%]. The percentage of offenders who are recommended and then admitted into Boot Camp is not provided for PRS category since this information is not captured in the Boot Camp data set.

Table 11. Percentage of Statutorily Eligible Offenders Recommended by Judges within Prior Record Score Category. [PRS]

Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Age of Boot Camp Offenders

Race/Ethnicity. Table 12 shows the distribution of offenders who are eligible by statute, recommended by the judge and admitted by the DOC by race/ethnicity. The data indicate that Blacks represent the largest number of offenders who are eligible [49%], recommended [52%] and accepted into Boot Camp [52%], while Hispanics represent the smallest number of those who are eligible [10%], recommended [13%], and admitted [10%].

Table 12. Number of Statewide Offenders Statutorily Eligible for Boot Camp, Recommended by the Judge and Admitted into Boot Camp by DOC by Race/Ethnicity.*

*The race/ethnicity was missing in the Sentencing Commission data set for 464 offenders at the
eligibility stage and for 50 offenders at the recommendation stage.

Table 13 provides: 1) the percentage of offenders who are statutorily eligible and receive a judicial recommendation for Boot Camp and 2) the percentage of offenders who receive a judicial referral and get accepted into the Boot Camp within each of the racial categories. This table shows that
Hispanic offenders who meet the statutory criteria are most likely to get a judicial referral [19%] while whites are the least likely [14%]. However, Hispanic offenders who receive a judicial referral are least likely to be admitted into the Boot Camp [60%] while the admission rate is similar for Whites [71%] and Blacks [69%].

Table 13. Percentage of Statutorily Eligible Offenders Recommended by Judges and Percentage of Offenders Recommended by Judges Admitted into the Boot Camp by DOC within Race/Ethnicity Category

Gender. Table 14 shows the distribution of offenders who are eligible, recommended, and accepted into Boot Camp by gender. Table 15 shows 1) the percent of eligible male and female offenders who are recommended by judges and 2) the percent of recommended male and female offenders who are accepted into the Boot Camp. As would be expected, Table 14 shows that males comprise the vast majority of offenders who are eligible [93%], recommended [96%], and admitted into Boot Camp [96%]. However, Table 15 shows that males and females have more similar referral rates [16% vs. 9%] and admission rates [67% vs. 59%].

Table 14. Number of Statewide Offenders Statutorily Eligible for Boot Camp, Recommended by the Judge, and Admitted into Boot Camp by DOC by Gender. *

*The information on gender was missing for 102 offenders at the eligibility stage and
10 offenders at the recommendation stage.

Table 15. Percentage of Statutorily Eligible Offenders Recommended by Judges and Percentage of Offenders Recommended by Judges Admitted into the Boot Camp by Gender

Age. By statute, offenders who are 35 years of age or older are not allowed into the Boot Camp Program. Table 16 shows the distribution of offenders who are eligible, recommended, and admitted into Boot Camp by age group. The age distribution of eligible offenders is similar across groupings though a slightly higher percentage of offenders fall into the 22-25 age group category [27%].. As the 16-17 age group consists of juveniles who are transferred to adult court, it is not surprising that those offenders are least represented [1%]. Younger offenders [under age 26] are most likely to be recommended [63%] and admitted [64%] into the Boot Camp.

Table 16. Number of Statewide Offenders Statutorily Eligible for Boot Camp, Recommended by the Judge, and Admitted into Boot Camp by DOC by Age *

*The information on age was missing from the PCS data for 132 offenders at the eligibility stage and from the Boot Camp/DOC data for 74 offenders at the admission stage.

Table 17 shows the percentage of eligible offenders who are recommended by judges and the percentage of judicial referrals admitted into the Boot Camp Program within each of the age group categories. Among eligible offenders, the likelihood of being recommended by a judge decreases with age. The 16-17 year old offenders are most likely to be recommended while the 30-34 year olds are least likely to be recommended [24% vs. 11%, respectively].

Table 17. Percentage of Statutorily Eligible Offenders Recommended by Judges and Percentage of Offenders Recommended by Judges Admitted into Boot Camp within Age Category

Boot Camp Candidates under the Sentencing Guidelines.

This section discusses offenders who are eligible and recommended for the Boot Camp in relation to the sentencing guidelines. The Boot Camp enabling legislation charged the Sentencing Commission with the responsibility of identifying eligible candidates for the Boot Camp. As historically the pool of candidates for the Boot Camp has been small, the Sentencing Commission has not made recommendations beyond that provided in statute. Further, with the 1994 sentencing guideline revisions, the Commission recommended that the less serious drug and theft offenders receive county jail rather than state prison. This worked to reduce even further the pool of eligible candidates for Boot Camp. The Commission, however, has always encouraged judges to consider offenders for the Boot Camp Program if they meet the statutory eligibility criteria.

All offenses are ranked by the Sentencing Commission on a scale of seriousness and receive an Offense Gravity Score ranging from 1 [least serious] to 14 [most serious]. The Prior Record Score is based upon the number and seriousness of the offender's prior adult convictions and juvenile adjudications. The Sentencing Commission uses both the Offense Gravity Score [OGS] and Prior Record Score [PRS] in the development of minimum sentence recommendations.

Table 18 shows the number of offenders who were eligible for Boot Camp during 1998 with respect to the sentencing guideline matrix [i.e. by OGS and PRS] and Table 19 shows the number of offenders recommended during that year. The gray shaded areas indicate the largest number of Boot Camp offenders who are eligible and recommended. As discussed previously, about 70% of offenders who are eligible and recommended have some type of prior record. Table 19, however, indicates that this does vary with respect to the seriousness of offense. A greater proportion of eligible offenders convicted of the more serious offenses have a PRS of 0. For example, about 45% of the eligible offenders with an OGS of 8 [n=99] have a PRS of 0. On the other hand, a greater proportion of eligible offenders convicted of less serious offenses have a prior record score greater than 3. For example, among offenders convicted of offenses with an OGS of 5, about 45% had a Prior Record Score of either 5 [n=106] or 6 [n=67]. These offenders are also those for whom the guidelines recommend state incarceration. A similar pattern holds for offenders who are recommended for Boot Camp by the judges as shown in Table 20. That is, a higher proportion of offenders with more serious convictions have no prior record while a higher proportion of the less serious offenders have a Prior Record Score of 4, 5, or 6.

Table 18. Number of Offenders Eligible for Boot Camp by OGS and PRS during 1998

Table 19. Number of Offenders Recommended for Boot Camp by OGS and PRS during 1998

Notes: These numbers represent the cases sentenced under the 1997 guidelines. Gray cells indicate where the largest number of offenders are eligible [>50] or recommended [>10]. The cells between the dark lines represent where the guidelines allow for RIP in lieu of incarceration. Cells above the dark line are where the guidelines require a state prison sentence.
RFEL=repeat felony offender; REVOC=repeat violent offender.

Summary

The Motivational Boot Camp Program, which is located in Quehanna, Pennsylvania [Clearfield County] opened in July, 1992. The Boot Camp is a six-month program that provides a strong rehabilitative environment with a particular emphasis on discipline, education and substance abuse treatment. Between July 1992 and December 1998 there have been 1670 offenders admitted into the program and about 80% have successfully completed the program.

Statewide, judges recommend about 16% of eligible offenders to the Boot Camp Program and the Department of Corrections admits about 66% of those recommended into the Boot Camp. The major reasons that offenders are rejected from the program are due to medical problems or outstanding detainers. As would be expected, offenders from the larger counties comprise the largest percentage of Boot Camp admissions, with Philadelphia and Allegheny counties accounting for 22% and 10% of the admissions, respectively. However, it should be noted that many of the smaller counties have a higher rate of eligible offenders who receive judicial referrals to Boot Camp and a higher rate of those referrals admitted into the Boot Camp Program.

Drug offenders comprise the majority of those admitted into the Boot Camp [56%] followed by those convicted of burglary [11%] and theft offenses [9%]. While the offender's prior record information was unavailable for the admission stage, the prior record of those offenders recommended by judges indicated that an offender having a prior record was not an obstacle to receiving a recommendation from the judge. As most of the offenders have a current conviction for a drug offense, it is possible that the prior record of those individuals could constitute prior drug offenses as well. As the Boot Camp heavily targets substance abuse, judges may feel that repeat drug offenders are as likely to benefit from the Boot Camp as are first time offenders.

With respect to the demographic characteristics of Boot Camp offenders, the profile of the offender who is eligible, recommended, and admitted into Boot Camp is a young, black, male. Interestingly, while females represent a minority of Boot Camp admissions [4%], the acceptance rate for females is fairly close to that of males [59% vs. 67%, respectively].

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