I love this girl...
I think the point of the death/suicide angle is to startle the prospective program parents back into consciousness - to startle them, jog their attention and maybe take this issue more seriously.
There are, however, many PP's who knew all about the deaths before sending their kids and who did it anyway. There's no reaching this kind of PP.
oh i am touched

ops:
I concern i have with going down this line is every programme including as i understand it WWASP in the early days claims that they understand the parents concern and that they are unique in xyz way. So every parent feels that they have sent their kid to one of the "good "ones. it would be good if people could see that incarceration is not a norm regardless of whether the prison has sunshine and lollypops or beatings and gruel.
Perhaps the mills idea of a society run by shaming and gossip is the way to go when convincing parents not to send kids to programmes.
Mabey it could be couched this way.
the us has around 20 million teens
If maya Szalavitz is correct a maximum of 100000 kids are in these places
So if even 1/4 of US teens are either mentally ill, drug addicted or just manipulative rude and delinquent this is still only
100000 out of 5 million teens
this means that there are far more sane parents than not.
I guess society could go 1 of 2 ways with the small but significant minority of parents who incarcerate their kids. They can either use reason, or socially shun them. I am not sure which would work better in creating social pressure not to send kids to programmes