"Troubled Teen" camps

[Rageaholic]

Link

I've heard of these horrible places before. I even thought of starting a topic on this very thing. Basically, they are these "camps" for "troubled teens" that use methods that would violate the Geneva Convention. And yes, kids have died in these camps. The scary thing about these are that there is no oversight and it's perfectly legal for parents to hire people to kidnap their kids and send them to these camps!

I'm still baffled as to how these camps are allowed to legally operate in the 21st century.

[s_stabeler]

I can think of a few basic rules (that, based off a comment on the article, are actually used already by the camps that aren't as bad as the ones in the article) for camps like these.
1) have the parents arrange travel to the camps, rather than essentially staging a kidnap.
2) the kids must be allowed to talk to their parents unmonitored.
3) packages- I can see checking the contents of a package (I'm thinking for items banned from the camp, here) and certainly don't destroy the packages in front of the kid. same goes for letters- let the kid get letters.
4) use trained staff- people trained in wilderness survival AND actual therapists for the therapy parts.

and also, kids dying at a wilderness therapy camp? should be grounds for the place being gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

[Andara Bledin]

Since kids don't have their own authority, parents having them shipped off somewhere, even without notifying them that they're going to do it, isn't considered kidnapping. It's still a shitty thing to do to anyone, however. While I can understand not warning an actual troubled kid that they're going to be shipped off might lead to some running away, the parents not being there to assure the kid in question that they're not being kidnapped is just plain psychological abuse no matter how you spin it, and should be illegal.

I find it particularly depressing that the ad on the second page is for one of those psycho troubled teen camps... located in Utah, to nobody's surprise.

[s_stabeler]

I said essentially staging a kidnap. When the mere absence of parental permission would turn it into a traditional kidnap, I am not massively bothered to make the distinction.

edit- I should make clear here that I mean strangers suddenly arriving, whisking you off to god knows where. I honestly don't care if that scenario is done with parental permission.

[Signmaker]

Being "outdoorsy", it sounds like a great way to get some structure and therapy. Knowing people who think being barefoot on a mowed lawn is getting uncomfortably close to nature, it sounds like it could also be a brutal nightmare. If you have a teen who does not want to be there, and is a flight concern, dragging them out into the backcountry against their will is a recipe for disaster.

I'm thinking these programs are better suited to "I'm depressed and anxious all the time, but I seem to feel better going for long hikes in te woods", and not good at all for "fuck my parents, I'll set cats on fire if I want to!".

[Nyoibo]

I remember seeing an account of a couple of people that went through this, all I could think of was, if it had happened to me there's a good chance someone might have been seriously injured if not killed in that kidnap attempt.

[fireheart17]

I remember seeing an account of a couple of people that went through this, all I could think of was, if it had happened to me there's a good chance someone might have been seriously injured if not killed in that kidnap attempt.

I would've been screaming something to the effect of "he's trying to kill/rape me!"

Down here, I have heard of a couple of those "troubled teen" camps in Aussieland, but the main differences are:

-They are HEAVILY regulated by the state.
-They involve community figures.
-One program I'm aware of involves the kids working with a school-of-the-air to get them back into education.

here's one example: http://brahminygroup.org.au/

[wolfie]

I read the article linked by the OP, and most of (U.S. viewpoint) these camps are in Montana and Utah BECAUSE these states don't regulate them. I wouldn't be surprised if some other state not only had strict regulations, but made "jurisdiction shopping" (i.e. if either the person doing the sending, or the child being sent, is a resident of state X, and the facility the kid is being sent to does not have regulations at least as strict as state X) a felony.

[Panacea]

I said essentially staging a kidnap. When the mere absence of parental permission would turn it into a traditional kidnap, I am not massively bothered to make the distinction.

edit- I should make clear here that I mean strangers suddenly arriving, whisking you off to god knows where. I honestly don't care if that scenario is done with parental permission.

It's a false equivalency argument. That kind of hyperbole just entrenches positions.

These kids are called troubled for a reason. They aren't responding to parental authority, and are out of control. That's why extreme measures sometimes have to be taken.

I don't have an issue with these kinds of programs as long as the counselors are trained professionals. The problem is many of these programs are essentially boot camps, and they simply do not work.

You can do real therapy in a wilderness environment and it can be effective. But it does need to be licensed and regulated because people in a custodial environment are extremely vulnerable to abuse.

[SongsOfDragons]

There was a TV show years ago that was about one of these camps, somewhere in a hot part of the US. What I can remember of it was marching the kids through an airport in handcuffs and the first stage of the abuse, er camp, seeing the kids given a tiny half tent and a circle a metre diameter in the open desert that they had to sit bolt upright in all day without a sound, not allowed to lie down and iirc given very poor food. Hello heatstroke.

The only crime one of the kids seemed to have was an active rebellion against their fucking helicopter parents. When she'd passed the camp and had learnt loads they came for her and said they were going back to the same helicoptery routine that had caused her to rebel - so of couse when she tried to argue that that wouldn't help her they sent her back to the camp straightaway to start back at square one in the oven tents. And you wonder why I call helicopter parenting - especially the Yank flavour of it - emotional abuse and neglect.

I can't remember what this monstrosity was called, but the show was on in the UK in the early 2000s. I said it was abuse, my mum loved it and said she was booking me tickets.

[mikoyan29]

It's a false equivalency argument. That kind of hyperbole just entrenches positions.

These kids are called troubled for a reason. They aren't responding to parental authority, and are out of control. That's why extreme measures sometimes have to be taken.

I don't have an issue with these kinds of programs as long as the counselors are trained professionals. The problem is many of these programs are essentially boot camps, and they simply do not work.

You can do real therapy in a wilderness environment and it can be effective. But it does need to be licensed and regulated because people in a custodial environment are extremely vulnerable to abuse.

Yeah but it seems that troubled teen to some parents is normal teen to many parents. And the problem is that many of these camps are not regulated nor do they have trained professionals running them.

[s_stabeler]

It's a false equivalency argument. That kind of hyperbole just entrenches positions.

These kids are called troubled for a reason. They aren't responding to parental authority, and are out of control. That's why extreme measures sometimes have to be taken.

I don't have an issue with these kinds of programs as long as the counselors are trained professionals. The problem is many of these programs are essentially boot camps, and they simply do not work.

You can do real therapy in a wilderness environment and it can be effective. But it does need to be licensed and regulated because people in a custodial environment are extremely vulnerable to abuse.

I'm not talking about the camps. I am talking about someone coming to a kid's house, then forcing them to leave w/o any kind of explanation. Not to mention that many of the kids sent are not, in fact, troubled. (read the article. some of the kids were sent there merely for not wanting to be a member of the church the rest of the family are members of.)

Do I support the idea of a program to help genuinely troubled kids? Yes, if it is effective, and non-abusive. Do I support seemingly-randomly turning up at a kid's house, then forcing them to go to god-knows-where? No. There is a simpler way- parent tells the kid "We are sending you to X camp, these people are there to take you there"- THEN, IF the kid tries to do a runner, then you can stop them.

[Hyena Dandy]

These kids are called troubled for a reason. They aren't responding to parental authority, and are out of control. That's why extreme measures sometimes have to be taken.

I don't have an issue with these kinds of programs as long as the counselors are trained professionals. The problem is many of these programs are essentially boot camps, and they simply do not work.

You can do real therapy in a wilderness environment and it can be effective. But it does need to be licensed and regulated because people in a custodial environment are extremely vulnerable to abuse.

Camps for troubled kids is a very good thing to have. But a lot of these things are not explainable simply by untrained counselors. There's a whole industry for "Troubled teens" that's based around the evangelical subculture, and that's what that Cracked thing looks like. They promise to reform 'troubled' kids, and allow that 'troubled' means 'lesbian' or 'not Christian' or 'sometimes looks at boys.'

The idea's fine, if the kids truly ARE out of control, but the abuses are not explainable by mere incompetence.