Teen Boot Camp AKA "Shock Incarceration"

Most of the privately owned boot camps designed to change teens from disobedient young men or women into law-abiding citizens can be found on the Internet. Some explain that their boot camps are designed with a template from military boot camp the sites boats of their success with other teens that have been changed from bad to good within a six to eight week period. They profess that the drill sergeant, bunk beds, marching and other disciplinary maneuvers will result in an attitude adjustment. According to the material on some of the sites, the length of the boot camp experience will generally be between 30 and 90 days, calling this experience a physically and mentally challenging procedure.

Other similar stories about disheartened parents of former teen boot camp cadets are available on countless Internet web sites. For example, consider the following story: Laura M_______  had already tried almost everything she could think about to try to get her 14 year-old son to at least pay attention to her. Her son was skipping school, disobeying and constantly talking back, and nothing she could think about would help. It all changed when she saw a television program that depicted military-dressed people yelling at teenagers on the stage and threatening to take everything away from them, short of life.

The demand for privately funded boot camps has been on the rise during the last three or four years, and, according to Stacey Shapiro, the director of juvenile justice for the National Mental Health Association in Virginia,"these boot camps just don't work. These  "shock incarceratio programs have failed in the past for the majority of youth placed in them."  Additionally, according to Larry Brendto, a professor emeritus of special education at Augustana College in South Carolina, has written several books about youth at risk and heads Reclaiming Youth, a training institute for professionals who work with these delinquent children. Brendto said that though the children "have received at least short-term benefits from the discipline and high expectations of boot camp." (3/4)