No More Nightmares at Tranquility Bay?
By John Gorenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on January 23, 2006, Printed on January 23, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31000/From Czechoslovakia to Costa Rica and Mexico, cops have seized American overseers for caging or mistreating American teens at harsh "boot camps" run under foreign flags to escape U.S. law.
But here at home, the companies that ship teenagers to remote reform schools can freely go about their business in many states. You can dial 1-800-355-TEEN to reach the sales staff of Teen Help, LLC, who can arrange for your child to be spirited away. They might put you in touch with "escorts," guys who can pull up to your driveway in a van and transport even the most defiant child to the airport. The next destination is up to you: a "tough love" school here in the 50 states, like Majestic Ranch in Utah or Spring Creek Lodge Academy in Montana?
Or perhaps Tranquility Bay, a barbed-wire discipline facility in Jamaica, where some of the approximately 250 teens can find themselves confined against their will and marched around by guards. Only the devil stands in the way of your consumer choice. The devil, that is, and a lone congressman, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.
I don't believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
--Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist