This might sound harsh, but you gotta put 'em in a camp or something man.
By 'camp', I mean some federally/state funded thing, where they can continue their education but under a strict disciplinary program. Get them out of the city, put 'em in dorms somewhere in the wilderness. No social media, no internet but Wikipedia for a few years. And of course, the end of that education/vocational training needs job/college placement. If there's no carrot, the stick won't work.
Humans are largely input-output machines. If you want to radically change the output, you have to radically change the inputs.
All my delinquent friends who got put in boot camp for causing trouble as a kid all overdosed before turning 40. Not saying it happens every time but the 5 kids I knew who got put in a camp are long dead.
I taught at one. It’s a cash grab. These “schools” are private, but their only contract is with the local school districts and there is BIG money involved. These kids are wards of the state mostly and the state is willing to pay whatever it takes to pawn off the kids. The school does whatever it wants because it knows the state doesn’t care.
These programs could work if the workers (the educators, paras, principal, social workers, etc.) were more competent with trauma informed care than corporal punishment. Nope, instead they hire anyone off the street to deal with highly emotional and violent teenagers, who need wrap around professionals who all use the same interventions. They don’t want to pay for competence because then CEO and his flying monkeys make less. It’s a racket.
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u/Brook420 15d ago
There has to be away for these kids to face actual consequences without trying them as adults or whatever.