I've been working in the Wilderness portion of Alldredge for nearly a year now. After spending the last hour reading some of the posts about the Academy, I can see that it has changed a great deal since its inception. The people that I work with are all caring, dedicated individuals who glady put their own comfort out of mind in order to better work with students. The Alldredge therapeutic model does make some assumptions based on moral high grounds (ie- it's not good to attempt to intimidate people physically, manipulate them emotionally, compulsively lie or steal) and does attempt to show youth that a negative life pattern can form from arrests, fistfights, etc. Many of the contributors to this forum seem to think that discouraging youth from these behaviours is limiting their ingrained freedoms, however, it is Alldredge's belief that choices in life are what matters- only some choices can limit choices down the road.
Alldredge is not a Behaviour mod program, nor TOUGHLOVE... at least not anymore. And no, students are not trained in Search and Rescue so they can track down their erstwhile comrades who are on the run (that one gave me a great laugh). The majority of what I have read on the program on this forum seems to have been written by people who have never attended, and obviously know next to nothing about the program. If you are seriously interested in any program, I would advise you to contact the program itself and even set up a visitation. That way is most likely to provide you with the real information you're looking for.
