Investors May Convert Resort Into Camp For Juvenile Offenders

A deserted hot springs resort may become a temporary work camp for juvenile offenders with alcohol or drug dependency.

A group of Twin Falls investors is looking at Magic Hot Springs, a remote resort 42 miles south of Twin Falls and 17 miles east of Jackpot, Nev.

The resort is equipped with cabins and a generator and is on the market for about $300,000, said Twin Falls County Commissioner Dennis Maughan.

“If someone escaped, they wouldn’t know where to go,” he said.

The state’s Department of Juvenile Corrections would contract with the investors to work with and try to rehabilitate 50 nonviolent offenders at a time.

Each offender would stay about 120 days.

Juvenile work camps have been tried in pockets around the state, but this would be the first time something has been done on a broad level, said Mike Johnson, state juvenile corrections director.

The Legislature gave his department $6 million last session to organize work camps statewide as part of their 1995 juvenile crime package.

It is also an effort to provide more space for juvenile offenders who are currently sent to expensive, out-of-town facilities.

Kids will study, clean highways and clear forest trails, among other activities.

The camps are not boot camps, Johnson said, which take a harsher, militaristic approach to reforming kids.

Workers at these camps, as well as those at an observation and assessment center near Boise, would search out the cause of the offenders’ problems and combine hard work and therapy to rehabilitate them, he said.

If the local investors succeed in buying the property, it could open in several months to a year, Maughan said.