| Skybird |
01-17-08 09:05 PM |
Do like we do in Germany (serious!) - send him to a 9 month education camp in Siberia (no joke, we really do it, i learned yesterday). Chopping wood for the fire in their house, outside at -50° C currently. Toilets in the garden. No water taps. No radio. No TV. No PC. No console. Just the group, the teacher/minders, the beautiful but isolated landscape, and a Russian police that is much more unforgiving than the german one - the kids fear them, and thus admit they respect them. Our kids in that camp behave, because they know what they have to expect in the prisons over there when for example stealing in that poor village.
It is a pedagogic program, though, but in no way a bootcamp (thank God). The educational success is better than with any arrest or program in Germany, except a well-known boxing camp that is run over here where juvenile offenders must train from 0500 until bedtime, and nothing else. They learn to get rid of their aggressions that way, they leanr to follow a structured day and learn discipline, they see the sporting success coming from that efforts, and the "Rückfallquote" (repetition quote?) is so low that it sets a record compared to anything else over here (around 10-20% only). Means: only one in ten or one in five passing that boxtraining camp over 6 months come in contact with the police again. Compared to that, bootcamps statistically show no significant difference to regular prison, most statistics seem to agree on a repetition quota of 50-60%, even american statistics show that, and first states have already abandoned or plan to abandon the system again. Florida, once in the 90s one of the loudest propagators of bootcamps, was the first giving them up.
the problem in Germany is that judges wait too long before they offer the choice between such programs and prison/reformatories for juveniles, and that we have too many such camps that are wishy-washy, and too few that go to the physical core of aggression like this boxing camp, and the siberian camp. But such things would be the most promising way to go, and have little to do with the soft vacation tours that juveniles do when being send to Brasil, or any other tourist ressorts, where it is hoped they would chnage for the better if seeing the beauty of a different place. :lol: The main difference to bootcamps is that a bootcamp is meant to break and disgrace kids, shatter them, and put them together in a military fashion: obedient, and low in self-esteem, where a tough educational camp is meant to offer a valve for aggression, reduce environmental overstimulation, offer protection and care as a reward for discipline, raise self-esteem, and offer the space for kids to disconnect from their troubled former life and come to their senses - maybe for the first time in years, if not in their whole former life. At the same time, surpassing of rules nevertheless has disciplinary consequences and thus gets discouraged. It is said to be needed rarely only, though. At first, they have no energy left anyway. Later they have started to appreciate to be successful and get appreciation that is gained by success in training, not by dumb violence.
So, holidays at the Copa Cabana are as useless and wrong as are bootcamps. Disciplined and demanding, yet rewarding sportcamps and isolation from sensual overstimulation seems to be the way to go, judging by statistics that speak a clear language when comparing these three options. Not disgrace and mental distruction, but offering appreciation for self-discipline and success in training, and encouraging positive potentials instead of destroying both the positive and negtaive potentials and kicking kids to the ground and showing them that ni matter what - they never can please the drill-instructors and fulfill his demands. Children and juveniles are no marines and should not be treated like marines - that's why the system is not only not working, but produces additonal negatives. In ten to fifteen years, nobody will speak of it anymore anyway.
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