Teen boot camps, abuse called therapy

Why do so many states still insist that humiliation and abuse will straighten out troubled kids?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/11/camp-fear



See the abuse on video, Check out youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idSgCbr2noE


WASHINGTON- When Bob Bacon sent his teenage son, Aaron, to a residential drug treatment program in Utah, he thought he was doing the best thing for hm. Aaron had become caught up in the social pressures of school, and after learning about the Utah-based North Star Expedition wilderness program, Bacon and his wife decided enrolling Aaron might help him get the healing he needed.


Less than a month later, Aaron was dead. Forced to hike eight to 10 miles a day with little food, Aaron dropped 23 pounds in three weeks before collapsing and dying on the trail. He had asked to see a doctor repeatedly, Bacon said, but received no help from counselors who were convinced Aaron was faking it.


“His mother and I will never escape the decision to send our gifted 16-year-old son to his death,” Bacon said. “We will go to our graves regretting our gullibility.”


http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/was ... /news.aspx? id=64627

Why do so many states still insist that humiliation and abuse will straighten out troubled kids?




http://tinyurl.com/MilitarySchoolAbuse
The link above will take you thousands of stories of the sadism , sexual abuse and plain old torture that goes on in these places.


I lived it as a child.

One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that in the teen behaviour business, the culture of ‘looking the other way’ is the norm, not the exception. You would be extremely hard pressed to find anyone working in a "boot camp" that will speak up when viscous crimes are committed by staff against other human beings. The fact is that I’ve never once met anyone in the business that has done so. After years of thinking about this I asked, what is it that drives psychopaths to seek careers in the teen behavoir modification industry ? I know exactly why. First you have to understand what a true psychopath is. It is a person who has no conscience, no sense of right or wrong, no guilt, shame, empathy, or anything within the usual set of characteristics that make one human.


They are attracted to occupations where they have power over others. To get others in a position where there are no witnesses, and in a setting where the psychopath seemingly has near unquestionable credibility.

Once the children are thrown into this scenario, the psychopaths are free to inflict any means of torture and abuse they want until they get their psychological ‘high’.

PLEASE NEVER DO THIS TO YOUR CHILD !!!

The emphasis on authority can only result in frustration, resentment, anger, short temper, a low self-esteem and aggression rather than respect.

I agree... I knew someone whose parents "gave up on them" for a lack of a better term and put them in the military. They lived in a military town, or close to one, so I could be off. But they were like 5' 3" female and discharged due to physical injury. They were off the wall crazy, not in a bad way, but it really just seemed like the parents were the huge failures and not her.

These places are terrifying. My brother went to one and got a lot worse, he just came back wanting revenge. As a result I don't remember several years of my life, because of what he did to me I guess (I don't really know the details).

It's one reason why I don't believe in fighting cruelty with cruelty, don't believe in punishment, maybe kindness won't change a person and maybe they will take advantage but cruelty will definitely make them worse.

One reason t6hat boot camps became so popular is that so many adults, and especially adult men, were rebellious, conduct-disorder type adolescents who went through military boot camps and came out a changed man. I was in the Marine Corps, and to be honest, I was an immature, selfish brat in the body of a young adult before I went to boot camp. The difference between a real military boot camp (especially the Marine Corps) is that all these freakishly undisciplined adolescents go in--tall, short, fat, super skinny, some can't read or write, etc.--and what comes out are uniformly hard-charging men in excellent physical condition who have learned to overcome adversity NO MATTER WHAT. I make no bones about it--it is brainwashing, pure and simple. Anybody who can successfully resist the change is expelled back to civilian life. They call those individuals "the ten per cent." About 10% of the recruits who arrive at Marine Corps boot camp will not graduate into the Corps. Those that "survive" Marine Corps boot camp have been socialized to be extremely reliable soldiers. Losers, delinquents, people of low moral character are sent to "Casual Company." Every couple of days our Drill Instructor would march our platoon up to the fence that surrounded Casual Company, face the platoon towards all the "drops" who were lounging around, shooting baskets, smoking and drinking Cokes. Then he would shout, "Allll right, ladies. Who wants to go home? Who wants to go back on the block and eat pizza with Susie? Nows the time! Raise your hand, you communist little puke! Come on! Nobody? Okay, then. Maybe tomorrow. Riiight, face. Forward, march!" Nobody ever asked to go home, although I bet 90% of us wanted to do so.
When you have been convinced that being a Marine is the most important achievement you could ever accomplish, that "loyalty" and "discipline" are words that are more important to you than life itself, that "Once a Marine, Always a Marine" is a literal truth, then you come out of boot camp a changed man. The first day we were there, T-1, the drill instructors conjured up some imaginary violation and put the entire platoon into "the Pit" (a large sandy, dusty PT area) and forced us to do push-ups, sit-ups, "mountain-climbers" and so on until people were weeping with exhaustion and vomiting from the dust. It took about twenty minutes. It was pathetic. We were completely demoralized and weak.
On the last day of boot camp, T-78 (Graduation Day, no less!) somebody in our platoon did something wrong and we were sent to the Pit, but now we had been training for three and a half months and we were hard as a rock. People were laughing, joking, making smart-ass comments under their breath the whole time we were PT'ing. The D.I.'s kept us at it, in a cloud of dust and dirt, for an hour and a half. When they finally called us to attention, you could see the cocky grins through the dirt and sweat. We were covered in filth, and ready for more. The D.I.'s couldn't break us. I think they did it on purpose, just to demonstrate to us how powerful we had become. After the graduation ceremony, our Senior Drill Instructor shook every man's hand, and said, "Welcome to the Corps, Marine." It was a rite of passage like no other. The slogans they trot out are true. "The Marine Corps Builds Men." "The Change is Forever." "Once a Marine, Always a Marine." People that haven't experienced it cannot understand it. That's why society built sheriff's boot camps, because they are trying to take anti-social little punks and turn them into decent men. The only problem is that the Marine Corps is not for everybody. Some punks just remain screwed up, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you put a criminal through a sheriff's boot camp, sometimes all you get is a well-disciplined criminal.

BrotherHobo wrote:One reason t6hat boot camps became so popular is that so many adults, and especially adult men, were rebellious, conduct-disorder type adolescents who went through military boot camps and came out a changed man. I was in the Marine Corps, and to be honest, I was an immature, selfish brat in the body of a young adult before I went to boot camp. The difference between a real military boot camp (especially the Marine Corps) is that all these freakishly undisciplined adolescents go in--tall, short, fat, super skinny, some can't read or write, etc.--and what comes out are uniformly hard-charging men in excellent physical condition who have learned to overcome adversity NO MATTER WHAT.

Aren't boot camps like in one in the OP completely different and separate from the marines? For starters, the USA does not have conscription, so if you're in the marine corps, you're there voluntarily, no? You have to be in your second to last year of high school to join too.

the marines probably have higher standards of conduct for their instructors who i'm sure they vet more carefully than some shady no name boot camp. correct me if i'm wrong, but the marines probably vet prospective members to avoid the obviously unsuitable. they don't want every juvenile delinquent who fills out an application, do they?

In the Marine Corps, to be assigned to drill instructor duty is a big honor. You must have achieved the rank of corporal or sergeant in order to apply. You have to request to go to the Drill Field to start with, and not everyone who applies is selected. Then, once selected, you go to Drill Instructor School, and not everyone who goes to D.I. school makes the cut. Once you graduate from Drill Instructor School you get assigned to duty at one of the two Marine Corps boot camps (Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, SC; or Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, CA.) and generally start out as a "troop handler," just moving new recruits from one place to another during the 14 "P-days," or Preparation Days. When I was in, there were 78 Training Days in a cycle, from T-1 to T-78. The selection process is pretty involved. Once a new D.I. gets assigned to a platoon, he starts out as an assistant D.I., and works his way up to Senior Drill Instructor--usually a staff sergeant. The female recruit platoons have female drill instructors, but the senior drill instructor (back then) of each female recruit platoon was always male.

The civilian "sheriff's boot camps" lack the intense selection process and training for the drill instructors, but most of the staff members are former Army or Marine Corps drill instructors who got out of the military, so they were trained by the armed forces.

One important thing to note is that any Marine recruit (and probably Army too) who bowed up to a drill instructor or refused any legitimate order was promptly kicked out. They did not tolerate any genuine criminals. Petty infractions, like smoking without permission, stealing or getting into fights got the recruit sent to a sub-platoon called Correctional Custody Platoon (CCP.) These poor bastards broke up an old WWII seaplane runway on board MCRD San Diego with sledgehammers for 12 hours a day, in unison, like a chain gang. The drill instructors in CCP are the largest, strongest, biggest bad asses in the Corps. They are huge. Every CCP recruit is wearing full utility uniform, including field jacket, flak jacket, helmet, and boots with unbloused trousers, even in the summer. It's extremely hot and unpleasant. (Blousing one's trouser cuffs with boot bands is a privilege in the Marines, earned by the platoon learning to correctly march. Prisoners aren't permitted to march in unison because they are being punished. The other Marines call them "flap-legged pukes.") The D.I. blows a whistle, and all sledge hammers, raised by maybe fifty or sixty CCP recruits, go up with the shouted response, "ONE, sir!" (Tweet!) WHOOM, sixty hammers come down on the broken edge of the runway--"TWO, sir!" (Tweet!) hammers up-- "ONE, sir!" (Tweet!) WHOOM, hammers come down--"TWO, sir!" TWELVE HOURS A DAY. Any hesitation or misbehavior of any kind, and two or three CCP drill instructors are on them like attack dogs, screaming and cursing. The Marine Corps has tons of rules and regulations about punishment duty, scheduled rest periods (ten minutes every two hours), hydration on command and so on. ("Rea-DY, DRINK!" You don't drink whenever you feel it, you drink when you are ordered to drink, in CCP.) Our D.I. would march our platoon past them every few days so we could sneak a peek. The message was crystal clear: If you screw up, you go to CCP.

When CCP recruits are released back to their original platoon, they will not talk about it. If they do, they are sent back for another two weeks. Nobody is willing to talk about CCP. All they will say is "I have nothing to say, so don't ask me a damned thing." They usually come back to the platoon extremely strong, and obedient as hell. The last thing they want to do is break any rules. At all. Period. They are extremely obedient. Marines who ever went to CCP are usually some of the best. Adolescence is over. Breaking rocks all day gives one a unique perspective on self-centered disobedience. They should have a slogan--"Seaplane Runways build Marines out of punks."

In Texas prisons, they make a type of food for punishment that is called "food loaf." They take all the leftover food at the end of the day, except anything sweet like fruit or syrup, and grind it all up into mush. Then these small loaves are weighed, to make sure the prisoner gets the required dietary calories per day, baked, and then frozen. They are served frozen, with a cup of water.

There is a story in the Texas Department of Corrections (the Texas prison system) where a habitually aggressive and insolent prisoner was sent to the notorious "Hole" (solitary confinement) at Huntsville Prison. After two weeks of solitary on "food loaf" and water, the warden went down there and asked the prisoner, "Are you ready to come out and behave yourself?" The prisoner replied, "###$ you, warden!" They closed the door. After a month, the warden came back. "Are you ready to come out and behave?" The prisoner replied, "###$ you, warden!" Another month went by, and now the prisoner has been in solitary, in semi-darkness, eating nothing but a small frozen "food loaf" twice a day and water, for over ten weeks. The warden asked, "Are you ready to come out and behave?" The prisoner replied, "Yes, warden. I'm ready." And the warden replied, "Too ######6 bad. I'm not ready to let you out." And he did another month.

This story sounds unbelievably cruel and heartless. But the prisoner in the Hole had been attacking other inmates, stealing their food, trying to rape weaker inmates and so on. He was a tough guy. Until he was weary of being alone and punished, being in the Hole was no punishment at all. It only works if the jackass in the Hole is in despair. After fourteen weeks in solitary, he was meek and obedient, and glad to be out among other prisoners. No longer the violent bad ass that went in, no longer a danger to other inmates or to corrections officers. He had come to understand that he is NOT running the prison, and that he WILL OBEY or he will go back. Maybe for another fourteen weeks. Or even longer. Liberals are horrified at this story. You know who isn't horrified? The weaker inmates he was brutally raping and beating. That's who.

I remember always being threatened to be sent to berkshire farms and boot camp. Its kinda funny though, as it misses the point, its often society that has the problem. They make it hard for these kids, then get mad and put these kids through crap needlessly when they don't know how to act...

They know how to behave. They just choose not to do so, because they get some kind of secondary reward for misbehaving. The reason military boot camps work (especially the Marine Corps boot camp) is because not only do the recruits get an admirable role model, they also get to share in the positive self-image and the positive public reputation of Marines who went before them.

What do the graduates of sheriff's boot camps get? What reward or improvement in their status do they receive after graduation? None. That's why the sheriff's boot camp model fails so often.
Marine recruits who graduate boot camp and go to the Fleet get a steady paycheck, housing in a barracks, three meals a day, free medical care and dental care, and thirty days paid vacation ("leave") a year, an issue of uniforms, usually access to a free gym, etc., etc.

Few civilian jobs can match those benefits, and fewer still can match the social status change. I never got one bit of respect for being a welder or a truck driver, but as a young Marine I did get admiration and accolades from the civilian world.

assimilate or die
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZEJ4OJTgg8