Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

Yeah, the War on Drugs is going great.

According to http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock

The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $500 per second.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/06/w ... rehab.html

Why Mexico's drug gangs target rehab centers

Saturday, June 11, 2011 | Borderland Beat Reporter Ovemex

Mexico's drug gangs frequently target private, unlicensed rehabilitation centers, which have less security than government-licensed rehabilitation centers.
By Geoffrey Ramsey, Guest blogger
C.S. Monitor

The events seemed like something out of a gangster film. According to Mexico’s El Universal, at around 5:30 p.m. on June 7, five vehicles pulled up outside the Victory Center for Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation in Torreon, Coahuila, in northern Mexico. A gang of heavily-armed men emerged from the cars, and burst into the clinic. Methodically moving from room to room, they opened fire on everyone in sight, killing 13 patients and workers.

Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the assailants climbed back into their cars and fled the scene.

Although such extreme violence at a treatment center may seem incomprehensible, attacks on these institutions are becoming a fairly common phenomenon in Mexico. To date, the bloodiest of these shootings was in June 2010, when a gunman killed 19 people in a drug rehabilitation center in the city of Chihuahua, which borders Coahuila.

Mass shootings of this sort, with a defenseless group of people indiscriminately gunned down, have become common in Torreon, though typically the incidents have occurred in bars.

Prior to the June 7 murders, there had been at least five such incidents, resulting in more than 50 deaths, since the beginning of 2010. In most of the cases, official reports blamed the killings on local representatives of the Sinaloa Cartel, who are based in neighboring Gomez Palacio and have been engaged in a year-long battle with Torreon-based Zetas for control of the area.



Killed to minimize the risk

Gangs frequently target private, unlicensed rehabilitation centers, because they are more likely to take in active gang members seeking to free themselves from an addiction to their own product. In contrast to government-licensed rehabilitation centers in Mexico, private clinics are not associated with the penal system and often have very little security, leaving their patients vulnerable to attacks by gangs seeking to avenge the death of a friend or eliminate a potential police informant. Some unlicensed clinics may also serve as fronts for drug dealing, or even as safe houses for gangsters seeking to lay low.

After a 2009 attack on a center in Juarez, the Chihuahua state Secretary of Public Security, Victor Valencia, said the rehab clinics had become a hotbed of criminal activity, adding that “cartels are using them to recruit young people from 17 to 23 years old.”

According to him, it is difficult for these youths to escape from a life of crime, as they are seen as a “disposable” liability by the leaders of criminal organizations.

Drug cartels cannot afford to have a former member come clean, either about himself or, worse, his bosses. Because these young people can be quickly replaced, they are often killed in order to minimize this risk.

Cartels run their own rehab centers

In some cases, organized criminal groups even run their own rehabilitation centers.

The most well-documented instance of this is in the state of Michoacan, where a drug trafficking organization known as the Familia Michoacana has traditionally exerted a high degree of social control in rural areas.

While recent reports suggest that the Familia is on the decline, Familia operatives have traditionally enforced curfews, provided jobs (through drug production and trafficking), punished minor offenses and encouraged otherwise lawful behavior, based on its strict quasi-religious morality. The group is also known to operate a series of rehab clinics as front institutions for recruiting and training centers.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said that a suspect captured in 2009 claimed to have trained 9,000 Familia recruits in various rehabilitation clinics across the western portion of the state. According to the suspect, addicts underwent treatment as part of a strict training regimen, and were executed if they did not comply with the organization’s demands. Officials believe that drug-trafficking organizations like the Familia may prefer to use rehabilitated addicts as transporters because they have an incentive not to touch the product.

'The problem is revenge'

Some officials have said that the violence is a simply an unfortunate but inevitable affliction of private addiction clinics. According to Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova, there are more than 1,500 such institutions throughout the country, and all of them face the same danger of attacks. "The problem is revenge between groups, and that is very difficult to control,” he said.

Because the private clinics are not subject to the same security standards as government ones, it's difficult to control who is admitted to the premises. In contrast to the private centers, the government’s rehabilitation clinics are equipped with alarms around the perimeter, and emergency panic buttons which clinic workers can sound if threatened.

The government clinics also face problems. Most of the addicts in these facilities are there as a result of Mexico’s limited decriminalization law, which allows drug addicts who have committed crimes to serve their sentences in rehabilitation centers, instead of prison.

When confronted with the heightened police security at government centers, and the stigma associated with them, drug addicts with criminal pasts often choose private clinics, whose low security leaves them exposed to attacks from the world they’re trying to leave behind. Thus, for many youths seeking to turn their lives around in Mexico, the message is clear: there is no exit.

I know you, Oscar, were hoping to get through the year without having to add any dead kids to the tally. Maybe 2012 will be better. I especially feel for Benson. That's a tragic story. The reaction of the state agencies after his death won't do anything to help the problem. Children need stable, loving homes, not more state supervision.

http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/c ... 03870.html

One Way Farm teen severely beaten still in critical condition
Male was assaulted at One Way Farm Children’s Home.


Staff report Updated 10:02 PM Sunday, December 25, 2011

FAIRFIELD TWP. — A spokeswoman with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center said Sunday there was no update on the condition of a 16-year-old boy who was beaten early last week at One Way Farm Children’s Home in Fairfield Twp.

The boy was listed in critical condition on Sunday night, according to hospital officials.

The teen, a Fairfield High School student, was assaulted Monday night by another resident of the children’s home, a 17-year-old Warren County boy. He has been charged with felony aggravated assault, according to Fairfield Twp. police.

Staff at the group home called 911 at around ?11:30 p.m. Monday to report an unresponsive boy. The call came three hours after he had been assaulted, according to police.

Between 7:30 and 8 p.m. Monday, the 17-year-old allegedly punched the victim, throwing him to the ground — where he landed on his head — and then repeatedly punched him in the head, said Fairfield Twp. Police Chief Richard St. John. The altercation was the result of a dispute over a flashlight each boy claimed was his.

Police were not called immediately after the assault, and the victim was up, walking and talking after the incident, St. John said. He was discovered later that night, unconscious on the floor, during a bed check by staff members, according to the police report.

Comments from above article: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=38388&p=410171#p410171

http://www.kxly.com/news/30062821/detail.html

Everything is Wrong
Is there physical, mental, or sexual abuse happening at this home for troubled teens? Are they "prisoners"? Is it a "private for profit" establishment? He may well have had a VERY GOOD reason for running. Corruption is rampant at so-called "private for profit corrections" companies, they have a vested interest in keeping people there by ANY means necessary. On the other hand, maybe this kid is incorrigible.
Reply · 5 ·
· Yesterday at 8:46am

Everything is Wrong
He was running for a reason.
Reply ·
· 15 hours ago

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/d ... g-n-idaho/

December 23, 2011 in City, Idaho
Missing teen found, OK in N. Idaho
The Spokesman-Review

A 16-year-old boy who walked away from a residential treatment facility Thursday night wearing only a flannel shirt and pajama bottoms was found safe today following a search.

Jacob Lee left the Innercept treatment facility on Dodd Road about 11 p.m. Thursday.

Today, Kootenai County Sheriff’s deputies were joined by 15 members of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Volunteer Search and Rescue and a helicopter from the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

Lee, whose parents live in Santa Clara, Calif., was found in the 6200 block of English Point Road, about six miles from Innercept. He was cold but OK, deputies said.

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Program website: http://www.innercept.net/

Ya know, I wasn't necessarily trying to convince anyone that this place IS, in fact, a "program" as it is commonly understood to be on fornits. It's just that far too many familiar components associated with coercive thought reform appear to be, and appear to have been for quite some time, securely in place. Consequently, I'm more than a lil suspicious of and concerned about what actually happens to kids, psychologically, long term, as a result of exposure to this place.

I imagine that a number of kids feel truly helped by One Way Farm. I certainly wouldn't want to take that away from them.

On the other hand, there is certainly present and evident, to *me* at least, a number of ideological loopholes often resorted to in this binnis of behav mod that have, historically, resulted in psychological and emotional damage to some kids over the years. Consequently, in *my* book at least, this place has a red flag draped all over it.

Fwiw, I really don't mind if I'm the only one who thinks that-a-way.

If I were a kid being routinely beaten or neglected to such an extent that I didn't have food to eat, clothes to wear, or medical or dental care and I was in pain then I'd probably welcome being removed from my home and placed in a place like One Way Farm. In my book the real problem is when kids are forcefully removed from their homes and placed against their will anywhere. In that case I'd view One Way Farm as a prison. It doesn't matter how nice the place may be a gilded cage is still a cage.