Save Martin 'boot camp'

An outstanding program with a record of helping troubled juveniles is about to die because the state failed to provide the money to keep the program operating.

During the past five years, between 73 percent and 81 percent of the Martin County Juvenile Offender Training Center's graduates have stayed out of trouble after completing the three-part program. The training center, operated on the grounds of the Martin County Jail, this year served 12 youths from Martin, 32 from Palm Beach and 18 from St. Lucie, Indian River and Okeechobee counties combined.

The program starts with a "shock incarceration" boot camp, then emphasizes education and self-esteem. Cadets, as they are called, spend the first four months in in-custody treatment at the jail facility, then continue with four more months of education, job training and work experience. The last four months, they check in each day but don't stay at the facility. The program enlists local ministers to help cadets reestablish a life in the community and includes the only Boy Scout troop in a juvenile detention facility. Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder said churches and Scouts provide a support group that can keep a youth from "returning to his punk friends selling drugs on the corner."

He and other Florida sheriffs began providing programs for juvenile delinquents because the state, which is supposed to provide the programs, wasn't doing it. Getting money from the state has been a chronic problem, Sheriff Crowder said, and the program has kept going "only through creativity, ingenuity and a commitment to the kids." As The Post reported last week, the facility came close to closing in 1997 and 2001 and now is $336,883 short of what it needs to operate for another year. "The Department of Juvenile Justice points fingers at the Legislature, and the Legisture points to the governor," Sheriff Crowder said. "Our programs have proved their merit. It's very frustrating."

The Martin program follows a predictable but still annoying pattern: The Legislature creates a need for services, then dumps the cost of the services onto the counties. This year, for example, the Legislature refused to pay operating expenses at juvenile detention centers, even though the people who run those facilities are state employees. So the counties will have to pay.

Martin's legislators were working Friday to persuade the state to come up with money for the Martin training center. Unless that happens, on Aug. 1 Sheriff Crowder will begin dismantling a program that actually helps juvenile offenders instead of just warehousing them.