I was listening to The Current this morning on CBC Radio and heard a couple interviews about a place called Tranquility Bay and the organization WASPS.

It is pretty disturbing. Even after the guy from WASPS came on to rebut a bunch of the points made by the reporter who was exposing stuff that happened there, I still am NOT convinced that it's a good thing.

Granted, I don't have my psych or even a social worker degree, but if you're putting kids in solitary confinement and telling them they have a serious drug problem because they smoked a cigarette or a joint or because they started having sex... hmm... sounds a little more like parents copping out than anything to me.

Some kids do need the tough love approach, but the kids they were describing on the show were so small fry compared to a lot of the troubled youth out there who would actually benefit from this program.

Heck, they even said that a lot of the kids come from broken homes (divorce, fighting parents, etc.) who then start acting out. Sure, the easy thing is to send them off to a penal colony for a few years to sort them out...

Sigh.

This is what I get for working in a group home that actually cares about what the residents want to do and works around that rather than being an institution.

Damned compassion! :P