These two editorials were written in reference to Dundee and have been taken from the daily AM Costa Rica newspaper. They are very good!!
Wants Dundee out
Dear A.M. Costa Rica:
Your editorial today, Monday, was thought-provoking.
So here are a few thoughts:
Why don't these "tough-love" behavior modification
people operate in their own countries, under regulations, supervision and oversight of their own laws, regulations and authorities in the U.S.? Why do they "run away" from American jurisdiction, going off to the Czech Republic, Jamaica and now our country of Costa Rica, where they fail to register, violate our immigration laws and operate in jurisdictional "gaps," avoiding both U.S. and Costa Rican laws?
If they are legitimate, why not operate in their own countries? If they want to run away from U.S.
jurisdiction, why do they not register here, comply with our laws, invite local authorities to supervise their work, meet our immigration laws and employment work-permit laws?
The fact is they are "outlaw" runaway, rogue operations, fleeing their own countries, often in trouble in their own countries, seeking a country like ours to operate outside our laws.
Costa Rica is tarnished with the sex-destination"
image. Now it is in The New York Times and
elsewhere as an "abuse-the-children" destination, and center for rogue child-abusing operations from foreign countries.
Maritza Molina S. Pavas
5/27/03
Parents are problem
Dear A.M. Costa Rica:
I read your editorial comments regarding Dundee and wondered how many others out there in the free
world condoned these programs. In the old days they were called reform schools; prisons, so-to-speak, for the underaged. Usually you had to appear in court in front of a judge, during which you would at least have an opportunity to defend yourself.
With the advent of places like Dundee, a person's day in court seems to have fallen by the wayside and with it one's individual (yes! kids are individuals) rights. Prisons for children who are deprived of due process should be illegal!
Privatizing the penal system does have its pluses. First off, they can now call them academies or correctional facilities. And more important, a profit can be made in supposedly fixing socially impaired individuals!
The drawbacks? First off, there is no incentive to
rehabilitate since the income is made on number of
bodies incarcerated (as with Dundee). I suspect that if a kid cleaned up their act in, let's say, 90 days that chances are they would not get an early release and Dundee would cheerfully refund the balance of the $30,000 of the 1 year program.
A major flaw in the Dundee approach is that the
parents are not a part of the rehabilitative process even though it's usually where the real problem(s) lies. The majority of research done on wayward kids points to their role models (parents are the first ones) as the source.
Requiring parents to take parenting classes, for
example, would probably solve the majority of
behavioral problems kids manifest in early teens. Kids behavior problems are part of a systemic family pathology and by just focusing on the kid is like putting a band aid on a bullet wound!
The kind of training that Dundee offers is, for the most part, "anti-social" and does little to train a person to become a member of a civil society. Standing in front of a wall for a few hours does not teach one social skills.
My suggestion is that, rather than shutting Dundee
down, they convert it into an adult facility to which parents of problem children could voluntarily check themselves in for however long it took to learn parenting skills.
Johann Wagener
5/27/03
