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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2022
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Sociology
First Advisor
R. Khari Brown
Abstract
While low income and students of color disproportionately get caught in the school to confinement pipeline, higher income and majority white students are funneled into the privatized and unregulated “troubled teen” industry. This industry loosely consists of various total institutions for reforming deviant adolescents like therapeutic boarding schools, boot camps, wilderness therapy programs and last chance ranches. Despite a clear historical legacy in the U.S. of sending children away, research is limited, even in establishing what constitutes residential treatment and other programs in the troubled teen industry let alone how these facilities have performed over time. This dissertation explores former middle to upper-class troubled youths’ experiences of the privatized “troubled teen” industry discovering how these experiences were shaped by a total institution to uncover the meaning formed by these rehabilitated adults. The results reveal how adults, former “problem youth”, socially constructed their deviance, experience of exile to a total institution and their process of rehabilitation into adulthood.
Recommended Citation
Mooney, Heather E., "Conflicting Consequences And The Carceral State: Troubled Teens In Therapeutic Boarding Schools" (2022). Wayne State University Dissertations. 3725.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/3725