A federal report released yesterday detailed thousands of examples of reports of abuse in privately run boot camps and residential “treatment” centers for troubled youth.

The report also found that managers of these programs, which are largely unregulated, faced little or no punishment for their actions.

The report, by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, examined the cases of 10 teenagers who died while at programs in six states, finding “significant evidence of ineffective management” and “reckless or negligent operating practices.” The report detailed evidence that teenagers were starved, forced to eat their own vomit, and to wallow for hours in their own excrement.

The term “troubled youth” is a catch-all that may often include adolescents with mental illness or emotional problems.

Other accounts here and here.

From the Boston Globe.

A recent report on the use of electric shock at a Massachusetts school for children with disabilities has prompted calls for legislative action.

The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center of Canton is believed to be the only school in the country that gives children electric shocks as a form of treatment. It has 230 students with such conditions as autism, mental retardation and emotional problems.

See earlier stories here.

Daniel Golden, writing in the Wall Street Journal, offers the theory that inadequate special education services failed to remediate the emotional problems of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-hui, and thus were partially to blame for the murder of 32 students and faculty members there. The story is yet another in a series of articles in that newspaper that find fault with the way special education services are being delivered.

Details of Mr. Cho’s experience in special education, which are only now coming to light, suggest that high schools may be paying too much attention to the academic advancement of bright but troubled stdents and not enough to their emotional disorders…

When the students move on to college, schools are rarely warned, students get help with special needs only if they seek it, and psychological problems can flare up, sometimes with devastating consequences …

In an earlier era, students with emotional disorders often dropped out of school or were educated in separate facilities. Today, they typically take mainstream classes — with accommodations as needed — and many go on to college.

From the Wall Street Journal. Registration required.