“Every year, thousands of children are sent against their will – often ripped out of their beds in the middle of the night by strangers – to private facilities to be treated for various mental illnesses, addiction issues, and perceived behavioral problems... it is estimated that there are over 120,000+ children kept in over 5,000+ centers around the United States and abroad. This is collectively known as the ‘Troubled Teen Industry’” (“The Troubled Teen Industry”). The troubled teen industry, or the TTI, is a for-profit organization that capitalizes on parents' fears and manipulates them into willingly sending their children to unregulated correctional facilities. These unregulated facilities lack governmental oversight and often lead to the …show more content…
Parents with genuine concerns about their children’s well-being are the primary targets of this multi-level marketing scheme. “Parents are often manipulated through fear tactics into believing their children desperately need this type of facility and are then manipulated to not believe their children if they say anything bad about the facility” (“TTI and its effects”). While it is not the parent’s intention to harm their child, they are at their wits end and are desperate for a solution. Through the troubled teen industry’s false advertisement of an effective correctional facility, they con desperate parents into willingly sending their kids away, believing that this decision is for the benefit of their kids. To protect the parent's view of the facility, they are lied to, being told that their child’s troublesome behavior includes lying about the facility to guilt-trip their parents. By using such tactics, the troubled teen industry is able to protect a parent’s positive perception of the program. This leads parents to disregard any signs of distress or pleas for help from their teen, chalking it up to slander and further solidifying the prospect that their teen is in desperate need of rehabilitation. To be a teen in this foreign place with no allies other than their parents and find out that even they don't believe in their cries for help. It is distressing to know that no one is on your side because you are deemed untrustworthy for simply being placed in a facility when in reality, they are victims of more abuse than most people can imagine. Although the majority of the TTI’s compliance tactics on teens involve using physical force, they also utilize psychological methods, namely the point and level systems. TTI survivor Jamie Mater recalls how “Residents’ behavior.[was] reinforced through a
High Sky Children’s Ranch first opened their doors in 1963, when a woman named Joan Nobles was concerned about girls who had no absolutely no place to go. She was the president of the PTA when she heard a young juvenile probation officer speak about the need for a home for those girls that had no where to go. She, along with many others, worked for three years to open the first home. In 1963 the first home was opened and housed five girls (High Sky Children’s Ranch, 2011). In 1985 High Sky changed their license to accept both boys and girls, which enabled them to keep sibling groups together. In 1987 High Sky was relicensed as a treatment facility to work with kids who were more traumatized or needed a higher level of care and was later licensed as a Therapeutic Foster Care. These programs help i...
Child Protective Services systems are often called “broken,” and the case of Logan Marr is a solid example of why. Logan was taken away from her mother, Christy, after an extensive battle that involved accusations, investigations, and mandates. After the struggle, Logan was finally placed into a foster home under the supervision of Sally Schofield, a child caseworker of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Schofield admits that she soon saw that book-learning and experience were two different things. Her lack of true preparation for the supervision and care of Logan ultimately lead to the death of the child.
The youth control complex is a form of social control in which the justice system (the prison system) and the socializing and social control institutions (school system) work together to stigmatize, criminalize, and punish inner city youth. Accordingly, these adolescents’ are regarded as deviant and incompetent to participate within U.S. society. On that note, deviance is created based on socially constructed labels of deviances; otherwise, deviance wouldn’t happen without these labels. Once an individual engages in a deviant behavior, it results in a response, often times, some type of punishment from the justice system. The youth control complex creates social incapacitation (social death) among juveniles. This ubiquitous system of social
The novel offers insight into a corrupted system that is failing today’s youth. This system places children into state custody with environments that are academically and socially incompetent. These children suffer within a corrupted system that denies resources and attention during the most crucial period in their emotional development. They develop very few meaningful adult relationships, endure damaging environments, and ultimately become trapped in a system that often leads to a prison life.
In New York, a minor can obtain mental health services, including counseling and medication management, without the legal guardian’s permission if the parent is deemed detrimental to the minor’s treatment (Feierman, Lieberman, Schissel, Diller, Kim & Chu, 2002). While this agency does prefer to obtain a guardian’s permission for mental health services, this social worker believes in taking a “person first” approach to treatment. Precious reported that she suffered a great deal at the hand of her mother and she did not want her involved in her life. It is not this social worker’s mission to cause Precious more harm, or to allow treatment to be impeded, even if this is an unpopular choice. This social work stands by this decision, because Precious is in desperate need of a safe space to process her trauma.
In comparing results of today’s Scared Straight programs with those of the pilot program, there seems to be a large gap in the rate of recidivism, perhaps due to changes in culture or because of the pressure from being televised in the pilot program. Also, a great flaw in Multisystemic Therapy is the high price, which often out of reach for lower income families, and requires a great deal of time and commitment, making it less appealing than the quick-fix offered by Scared Straight. Research would suggest that Scared Straight style program is flawed in that it does not take into account the way a child sees an incarcerated adult, and in that it increases recidivism rather than decreases it. However, parents of children who have participated in M.A.C.E. have praised the program, and claimed that it changed the attitude and behavior of their child. Parents of children who have participated in Multisystemic Therapy have made similar claims, stating that there has been an improved overall attitude in their child. The effectiveness of MST versus Scared Straight is difficult to gauge, as parents have similar positive things to say about their preferred program, and both have their drawbacks, Scared Straight’s being the rate of recidivism, and MST’s being the high initial price. However, effectiveness aside,
Eddy, J., C.R., M., Schiffmann, T., Newton, R., Olin, L., Leve, L., et al. (2008). Development of a multisystemic parent management training intervention for incarcerated parents, their children and families. Clinical Psychologist , 86-98.
Satchel, Roslyn M. Lost Opportunities: Our children are not rehabilitated when they are treated and incaracated as adults. n.d. .
"Spending Money in All the Wrong Places: Jails & Prisons." NAMI. National Alliance on Mental Illness, n.d. Web. 07 May 2014.
Many Juveniles have been deprived of their proper treatment due to society’s lack of understanding and compassion, yet research clearly shows that mental health treatment not only keeps them at bay from repeating their crimes, but also helps them live a more positive lifestyle in society. In times we blame the juvenile for their mistakes, however instead of pointing fingers at them, we can come together as community to help them overcome their “inner demons”. After all, it is not the children committing the crimes, but their mental disorder that is hindering them from living a normal lifestyle.
The juvenile justice system faces a significant challenge in identifying and responding to the psychiatric disorders of detained youth because research has shown that it is difficult to define the best means to use and enhance the scarce mental health resources (Kessler & Kraus, 2007). According to Cocozza and Skowyra (2000) “Children’s and adolescents’ mental health needs have historically been addressed inadequately in policy, practice, and research and have only the number of youth with mental illness and their level of unmet needs recognized” (p 4). Furthermore, that the juvenile justice system has gone from treatment and rehabilitation to retribution and punishment, that the prevalence is higher for youths who are involved with the system have mental health disorders when compared to the general population. In this paper I will be discussing pathways of juvenile detentions, types of mentally ill juvenile offenders, working alliance, treatment/intervention options available, challenges of untreated mental illness, and research findings.
Adolescent criminal acts, which include but are not limited to murder, rape, armed robbery, violent assault, mugging, arson, vandalism and robbery are a large portion of the crimes represented in the media. Alternative options to throwing these kids in juvenile detention centers is a rehabilitative boot camp where they have no control over even their own bodies or programs similar to scared straight where they see possible consequences to their actions. The importance of the success or failure of these programs is important because right now it is the popular solution. If these programs are going nowhere, time should be invested in creating new ideas and methods to treat these children before they become adults in the prison system.
...(2004). Applying the principles of effective intervention to juvenile correctional programs. Corrections Today, 66(7), 26-29. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4bd9d7f2-8ac5-42c6-a100-a2443eda9cbf@sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4213
It is common for juveniles in need of rehabilitation to have multiple problems. Sometimes, the ...
It was a warm August night in Baltimore when police found the bodies of three teenage boys gunned down outside a playground. One of the teens was Franklin Morris a seventeen-year-old frequently suspend from school and left to his own vices. His mother concerned about the direction he was heading reached out for help. A counselor suggested a deterrence program aimed a scaring him straight. At fourteen years old Franklin was featured on the A&E network show Scared Straight.(Cable) A television show that follows around trouble juveniles while they tour and experience the hardened criminal world of prisons, hoping to deter them from the prison system. The show portrayed him as a young man with no boundaries and lack of respect towards the community and his parents. Within three years after the program, Franklin was right back on the street with a more hardened attitude. What could have prevented him from succumbing to a violent life on the streets? And how do we prevent others from ending up in the same situation.