Boot camps for teens are heading towards extinction after what has been described as a treatment experiment gone wrong.
Corrections expert Dr. Edward Latessa has studied the issue extensively and says most boot camp operators have either gone out of business or modified their programs to emphasize treatment and rehabilitation.
Latessa, a juvenile justice expert at the University of Cincinnati, says boot camps fail because they focus on things like discipline, physical conditioning, and bonding with other offenders rather than on problem behaviour and attitudes that got teens in trouble in the first place.
“What are they teaching you in boot camp? Drills, ceremony, discipline, how to say yes sir, no sir. Well the problem is that’s not related to delinquent behaviour. Getting you in good shape just means you’ll be able to kick someone’s ass quicker.”
Latessa says the problem with boot camps wasn’t that they were all poorly run – because some were run well – but that they were completely ineffective at helping youth develop coping skills they could use back in the real world.
Latessa says good residential treatment programs for troubled teens focus on the behaviours and attitudes related to delinquent or problem behaviour and help youth learn and practice skills they can use with their family and peers back home. Troubled teens learn applicable life skills like how to get out of risky situations, how to stay away from negative peers, and how to be assertive with friends who may lead them astray.
“If teens practice these skills then they have the ability to deal with situations when they get into them,“ he said. “Good programs teach those things and they do it in a way that it is modeled, practiced, and reinforced.”
Corrections experts pontificating on the relative merits of youth residential treatment programs, and managing to miss the point altogether.
There was a time when intelligent people thought that residential schools for aboriginal children were a good idea; you wouldn't find a group of experts today debating the pros and cons of this or that particular school. The consensus opinion would be that residential schools were ritualized child abuse. Likewise, there will come a time when today's residential “treatment” programs will be held accountable and liable for the untold misery and damage they have caused.
We in the medical profession are casting a very critical and inquiring gaze over the rapidly expanding “youth treatment” industry, an industry which is almost entirely unregulated, highly profitable, and of dubious value.
As a practice, these programs universally blame children for the difficulties that families experience, and pathologize behavior which is largely symptomatic of teenagers generally. They remove children from their families for lengthy periods of time, a practice which is contraindicated in all serious adolescent developmental literature. “Treatment” is largely involuntary, coercive and as a result ineffective. Third party referrals are rare (meaning that a child has not been referred to one of these programs by a pediatrician, psychiatrist, or other licensed practictioner). Lengths of stay oftentimes exceed one year, which is longer than many adolescents are incarcerated for serious crimes against people and property. But most importantly, these programs deny children basic civil liberties and impose hardships on children that we as a society would never tolerate for adults. Adults make poor choices as well, they just aren't incarcerated, removed from everyone and everything that is significant, and sent away for behavior modification, all without due process.
This practice is controversial even in the context of suspected terrorists here in the United States, never mind that we are talking about our children.
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