Episode 7: 'It’s the Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done'

Caught

WNYC Studios

Politics, Society & Culture, Documentary, News, True Crime

4.9 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2018

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The justice system isn’t the catch-all for every struggling kid. Desperate parents with means can turn to a whole network of private programs before their kids even get caught. The state of Utah houses a $400 million industry for just such families. For an average cost of $513 a day, parents can send their kids to one popular option: wilderness therapy camps. These are programs that claim sending kids into the wild can cure all kinds of issues, including everything from drug use to screen addiction, anxiety, and defiance. For a young person named James, this type of intervention in his teenage years was life-changing. Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice is supported, in part, by the Anne Levy Fund, Margaret Neubart Foundation, the John and Gwen Smart Family Foundation, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported, WNYC Studios.
0:09.0	My name is Nancy Solomon.
0:11.2	I work at WNYC.
0:13.3	I have a 20-year-old son who's the subject of this conversation.
0:17.7	In this episode, we're going to look at one way families are trying to protect their
0:21.5	kids from entering the justice system, families who have a lot more resources than the ones we've
0:27.0	profiled so far. But I'm not a parent, and I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to look
0:32.9	at your kid and think, wow, he is sliding out of control, are worse, to be unsure, to wonder,
0:39.6	is this just a teen thing or is something irreparable about to happen?
0:43.8	So I asked Nancy to help me understand when she had that moment of desperation with her own son.
0:52.2	So this starts in high school, and he starts, I don't know whether it starts with him
1:00.7	smoking pot or whether it just starts with him flailing academically in high school.
1:06.9	Either way, it wasn't just about a kid getting stoned behind the house too much.
1:11.0	He was flat out not going to school.
1:13.3	Nancy had been patient, tried to let him find his way, but she felt like time was running out.
1:18.1	She let him drop out of public school, and she found him a great private boarding school.
1:22.5	And I got him in, and he got himself in.
1:24.8	He wrote himself an essay.
1:26.1	He went on the trip up there to see the place. Things were really looking a lot better. I was so relieved.
1:31.7	For a few months. And then...
1:34.0	In early May, he got expelled.
1:39.1	What were you thinking at that point?
	...

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