Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change by Wilson Timothy

Author:Wilson, Timothy [Wilson, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780141924229
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-08-31T14:00:00+00:00

GETTING EVEN TOUGHER

Maybe there is another reason why scared-straight programs fail—they don’t deliver a strong enough message. What if we got even tougher with at-risk teens? We could send them off to “boot camps” modeled after basic training in the military, where they learn a thing or two about discipline, hard work, and respect for authority. Wouldn’t that hammer some sense into them?

This approach has been tried without success, though that hasn’t stopped teen boot camps from proliferating. Boot camps became popular in the 1990s and there are now more than fifty such programs in the United States and other countries. Most are for first-time juvenile offenders who are assigned to boot camps instead of prison or other detention facilities. The juveniles typically attend for two to six months, during which time they wear uniforms, follow strict schedules, participate in military-style drills, engage in physical exercise, and perform assigned duties and chores. Although there are very few good studies of their effectiveness, those that have been conducted show that boot camps don’t work to reduce criminal recidivism. It’s easy to think of reasons why boot camps don’t work—maybe they are too punitive, maybe they catch kids too late in the game, or maybe they focus too much on discipline and too little on providing counseling or giving the kids useful skills such as job training. Or, like the scared-straight approach, maybe they don’t pay enough attention to teens’ narratives about who they are and why they might want to avoid a life of crime.6

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