From Tough Love to Abu Ghraib

Now that a fourteen-year-old boy has died, the dreadful details of the systematic abuse occurring at Florida's youth boot camps are coming out: the routine use of "pain compliance" techniques, the forced inhalation of ammonia, the kneeing, wrist-twisting, "hammer strikes" (punches), stun guns and pepper spray.

The story and the state's response to it epitomizes the inherent link between "tough love" tactics and abuse of power and should give pause to anyone who believes that America can use torture--even "torture-lite"-- in any fashion without abandoning its core values.

Even Florida lawmakers are expressing shock at how non-violent teen offenders have been being treated in the state's boot camps: the fact that the second-in-command in Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) refused to say whether adults are permitted to use violence on teen inmates for simple noncompliance has caused political and editorial outrage.

The official's silence is probably related to the fact that lawsuits against the state by the boy's parents would be bolstered by news of policies--which are uniform in mental health and other juvenile lock-up facilities--that disallow the use of force except when a person is a threat to himself or others.

With much fanfare, the DJJ announced last week that its new policy would give nonviolent teens the rights that adult military recruits and even death-row inmates have: to be free of the corporal punishments described above, unless they engage in life-threatening violence.

But banning particular abusive tactics in correctional boot camps is like banning a few specific sex acts in pornography: though targeted offensive obscenities may no longer appear, others will soon be devised to replace them.

From studying the now-close-to-five decade history of "tough love" tactics in teen treatment, I've come to the conclusion that abuse is intrinsic to its structure. If a lock-down program is based on the idea that participants need to suffer--emotionally or physically--in order to improve and it incorporates the notion that inflicting pain is the responsibility of the people in charge, excesses will inevitably occur.

Once people come to believe that they can help others by hurting them, any sadistic impulses they have will be heightened. When they see people around them behaving in a similarly callous fashion and being rewarded with higher status, these inclinations will be reinforced.

This is a corollary of the old adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute corruption is hastened by the belief by those in power that inflicting pain on others is good for them--and conversely, that mercy is harm.

Tough-love ideology promotes this vision of the world--in boot-camp style programs, helping a friend is reframed as dangerous "enabling." If someone avoids pain due to your intervention, you have helped him evade what they see as the necessary "consequences" of his actions. If a person, due to poor planning or misfortune, is low on food or funds, offering a helping hand is allowing him not to suffer the consequences that God or Nature intended for him.

Altruism is reframed as weakness; compassion as violation of self-determination. Any form of dependence at all is seen as worse than death--getting through struggles without help is the ultimate good. This is individualism gone mad.

In my research, I've seen instances where children were literally punished for sharing their food with a friend who had been starved as "consequences" for exhibiting symptoms of an illness that the counselors did not believe was real.

Of the several dozen tough-love deaths that I have investigated, every single one except for a few sheer accidents (a boating accident and a truck crash), was caused by the belief of counselors that the "manipulative" teenagers were faking their complaints. When a 300-pound-plus counselor sat on a 65-pound-boy to restrain him, the child was "playing possum" when he went still after complaining he couldn't breathe; when a 16-year-old boy soiled and wet himself and couldn't stop vomiting, he was a "faker."

In this latest death, a nurse failed to intervene in the beating, and was known to dismiss previous health complaints as "malingering."

When altruism becomes despicable "enabling," and inflicting suffering is "helping," people lose their moral compass.

We have taken the idea of American self-determination way too far--and our denigration of compassion has begun to corrode our communities. A country that allows such treatment of any kids, even "bad" kids, is surely less likely to oppose use of outright torture on terrorist suspects.

And when we start to think that torture and indefinite detention with no chance for trial at the whim of an unchecked executive is acceptable, we have become unrecognizable.

Are these really the values with which we really want to raise our kids? If boot-camp-style abuse produced good citizens, there would be a real ethical debate over whether or not to use it. But when we know that it does not--and we know that it desensitizes and dehumanizes not just its victims, but its perpetrators--why on earth do we stick with it?

Kinder, gentler, better-regulated abuse is not the answer. True compassion is. And that doesn't mean simply allowing teens to do whatever they will--it means modeling better behavior, not just in the limits that we set and the consequences that we impose, but in the care with which we treat each other.