Kids in prison...

Only in Iraq, right? Wrong.

Not only did it recently come out that Saddam's children's prison was actually an orphanage, (from Atrios) but forgotten amidst all the pro-war invective the American people sopped up with their biscuits and grits was the harsh reality of the child prison industry here in the good ol' USA.

From the Guardian:

"In America, parents send their troubled offspring to Jamaica's Tranquility Bay - a 'behaviour-modification centre' which charges $40,000 a year to 'cure' them...

Inside, 250 foreign children are locked up. Almost all are American, but though kept prisoner, they were not sent here by a court of law. Their parents paid to have them kidnapped and flown here against their will, to be incarcerated for up to three years, sometimes even longer. They will not be released until they are judged to be respectful, polite and obedient enough to rejoin their families...

There is no free time, and you are never alone...

Tranquility Bay is one of 11 facilities affiliated to an organisation in Utah called the World Wide Association of Speciality Programs. The facilities are located in the States and Caribbean region, and although independently owned, all run the same programme, devised by Wwasp...

The owner is an American called Jay Kay...Kay is 33 years old, and the son of Wwasp's chief director. He opened the facility at the age of 27, after four years as administrator of a Wwasp-run juvenile psychiatric hospital in Utah. Previously he had been a night guard there, and before that a petrol-pump attendant, having dropped out of college. He has no qualifications in child development, but considers this unimportant...

The strategy of coercing children to rewire themselves is the concept Kay is most proud of, for he believes it places troubled teenagers' redemption in their own hands."


I'm getting shivers just skimming the article, which I read last week. Please go read both parts of the article, which describes in depth the process by which WWASP prison camps (there are several worldwide) reprogram teenagers to be obedient, polite, and completely devoid of free will and thought.

-tn

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