fayerody,
you may have lucked out with your daughter, there may be good programs among the bad, you didn't mention which one you were involved with.

I haven't watched the show except for 5 mins. or so, I think editing may likely fail to show the whole picture anyway.

Parker10,
I haven't seen the scared straight movie so I can't comment on it other than to point out that the concept has been used to abuse. In a short search I found the following:

___________
Friday :: April 01, 2005
'Scared Straight' Kid Beaten by Guards

by TChris

What lesson does a troubled 13-year-old kid learn when his father, using a "scared straight" approach to crime prevention, turns him over to prison guards who brutalize him?

Anthony Donald Sr. ... placed the youngster, who has never been charged with a crime, in the hands of two friends who are Shuman guards. ... Donald Jr. said the guards ordered him to strip in a public place and put on a uniform. When he refused, he said, four guards forced him to the ground, beat him and stripped off his pants.

The four guards, employed by the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center in Pennsylvania, are designated as "child care workers." Child abusers would be a more appropriate title. They've been charged with unlawful restraint and false imprisonment, as well as a variety of other crimes, including assault, child endangerment and making terroristic threats. The father is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment.

The boy's mother legitimately wonders how the guards treat children who are actually detained in the facility if this is how they behave with a friend's child.
Posted Friday :: April 01, 2005| Juvenile Offenders
_______________


That's certainly beautiful country and the living in a teepee in the snow and probably other of the outdoor adventure activities are things I have done and enjoyed immensely as well in the Rockies and elsewhere under harsher weather conditions than I saw in my brief view, voluntarily. They crossed a line, according to what I've read on the site I linked to, when they sent kids there involuntarily, that is called kidnapping and should be treated as such, any other additional criminal charges warranted would depend on what they did to their hostages after that.

Artist, and other's who are still supporters of such boot camps,
I don't know what else to say to you other than, read some of the critical analisis, and that the apparent results of the "positive outcomes" may be just that, apparent but not so real as it might seem.

Sky,
I'm a huge fan of wilderness adventures, but the use of wilderness to isolate and control, mind control, and abuse people (kids are fully people and entitled to all the human rights that any of us are) against their will it's a crime against human rights in the real world, no matter the motivation. I don't have personal experience with outward bound or NOLS another wilderness group that two high school friends were part of and "seemed" unharmed by though being a skeptic I would have to look into their programs, records and critical reviews, to evaluate them individually. Each of the abusive youth gulags (I do compare some of them to the Russian prison/re-education camps based on what I've read, differences of degree may not be differences of kind) has a big rationalization for their crimes fall apart under thorough rational logical scrutiny. These camps are big business preying on the frustrations of parents having trouble guiding their kids. In the present nearly unregulated legal climate parents may have an even bigger job weeding out the systematic abusers for profit than they had to begin with. (buyer/citizens beware)

~Down