Florida's largest black Baptist organization is trying to reminded us of the death of Martin Lee Anderson, exhaustivelydocumented at Wikipedia, and of the evil done by ideologically driven nonsolutions to serious problems.
Anderson died in a Florida "boot camp" -- a program based on principles military-derived of "shock incarceration", which are somehow ever popular among political conservatives.
North Carolina and a great many other states still run or permit private organizations to operate "boot camps," even though the National Mental Health Association, National Institutes of Health and others have concluded that they don't work.
An Oct. 10, 2007, Government Accountability Office investigation reported a nationwide problem with "Abuse
and Death" of troubled kids in boot-camp programs.
Florida's Progressive Missionary and Educational Baptist State Convention seeks to inspire new programs aimed at keeping young men out of trouble.
State boot camps were shut down in Florida on June 1, 2006, and should be shut down elsewhere. As good empirical data has consistently indicated, they are a form of both private and institutionalized malpractice. Yet they remain resistant to reform, because they are yoked to a tandem political magic -- cheap for government and profitable for private companies.
Ethics Daily reported that the black Baptist organization "pledged to use the 2006 death of a 14-year-old African-American youth at a boot-camp style detention center to inspire new programs aimed at keeping young men out of trouble."
As Florida Social Justice Commission Chairman Walter Williams put it:
In spite of the pain we feel, we will not be traumatized to the extent that our silence be mistaken for social amnesia.
They're right in Florida, and for the sake of trouble teens still alive, we should follow their lead.
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