From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Guys, do you remember daytime TV talk shows?
Why do I ever bring back daytime TV talk shows?
That's what I say?
Yeah, what were your favorites?
I'm joking really, I just have a very distinct memory of watching I think it was Morey No, I think it was Jerry Springer. But maybe I mentioned this on the show before. When I was probably in my late early teens, like twelve thirteen, I.
Saw this thing.
There was a segment where it was this like white supremacist family like being interviewed on Jerry Springer and they were just using the most hateful, like despicable language, and it was just on TV.
And I was just shocked by that and it.
Sticks with me to this day.
It said some really terrible things, and I was like, this is okay, this is what we're allowing to be the source of, like chair throwing kind of escavations.
This is TV. And one of those hosts later attained political power based kind of on the talk shows.
Is that true?
Yeah? I think Jerry Sprinker.
Well, no, wasn't he. I think he was does before? Oh was before?
I think he got a talk show off politics, exact revolving doors.
Oh and you know doctor Oz made himself a fancy little closet in the new administration.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, our old friend doctor at Oz. We wish him a great several weeks in positions. Is he in the physics given the turnaround?
Is he really he's running Medicaid Medicare I believe? Is this?
Yeah, he got confirmed, but it was in the wind for a while.
Well, you know, boys, no matter how flat you make a pancake, there's always two sides.
That's doctor Phil, and that reminds us of folks like Sally Jesse, Raphael Mari Povich. Yeah, Jerry Springer, of course, doctor Phil. These television stations in the United States were absolutely riddled with daytime talk shows. In the era that halcyon time of the nineteen nineties to the early two thousands, and they were so prolific that they created their own
sort of internal genres. And one of the internal genres in addition to look at these white supremacists DA Who's was the idea of finding bad kids and setting them straight, setting them straight by scaring them, just like the like a more intensive version of the program some public schools still do where you take kids to talk to prisoners and they yell at JL right, yeah, yeah, don't make my misteake. Stamp fraud is not for winners.
Yes, well, since yeah, exactly, we've seen relative actually very recent reenactments of that lampooning of that on Saturday Night Live when I think it was on the twenty fifth anniversary special, they did another one of their Scared Straight sketches. It was also Keenan and other people go through and do that very thing we're talking about.
It was also in arreested development, I think, where Jeffrey Tambor's character who's incarcerated, he does a scared straight thing.
Like and to some kids.
We we be remiss to not point out the legendary Key and Peel they have a fantastic sketch of a this is all comedy. They have a fantastic sketch of a recovering criminal who goes to speak at a public assembly or the assembly at a school, and no spoilers, somewhat embellishes his story. What we're telling you today, what we're exploring today, fellow conspiracy realist, is not embellishment. It is true that a rogues gallery of daytime talk TV
crews and producers. They made a lot of money by appearing to take kids on the wrong path and giving them life changing lessons about the consequences of their actions, shaping them up into sober buy the books five by five future citizen assets of the United States. This was I think the TV talk show part. I see that as a watershed moment for all sorts of terrible things because it really pushed the American public to approve of tonight's subject, shock incarceration.
Yeah, I think so. But there were real programs like that through juvenile correction systems that would be like go to a school and talk. I mean, that was a real thing. It wasn't just in the realm of you know, show it on TV or you know, show it off on a talk show. This was a real thing, This concept of scaring the crap out of kids.
It still is a real thing even as we record this evening. Let's pause for a small word from our sponsors, and then we're gonna dive into the concept. Hey, fellow veterans in the crowd, do you like boot camp? What if it was for kids? Here are the facts, all right, Shock Incarceration short SI. You can read about it in all sorts of research that we had to read. There's a lot of stuff on OJP dot gov regarding this.
It's on paper it sounds really good. It's both compassionate while still being tough on crime, an alternative to traditional imprisonment in the US penal system. It's usually meant for nonviolent, first time offenders, and they're often young. Now, as we'll see, it goes state by state. There's also there have been federal programs, but they're the vibe they all have is that they're modeled after military programs.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
I actually have been working for the last year or so on a podcast about this within the main subject as a guy who went through this program, and the podcast is an a bursive creativity called chock incarceration and it comes out in June. So there's definitely an inside perspective on somebody that went through one of these programs of the very vision that's for adults, like in the US penal system, that you were mentioning them.
Yeah, and let's go ahead at the top just address the name, because that name is shocking. It is, if you will, when you hear shock incarceration, it summons thoughts, at least in my mind, of alternative methods for controlling someone's let's say, mental health issues in the day.
Yeah, I mean, well, it does evoke that kind of imagery.
Shock is a shock is definitely a choice wise.
Makes you think of shock troopers maybe if you if you're aware of that at all, electricity, Yes, it just feels it's got that visceral tone to it that when you hear it, it sounds like it's something worse than being sent being just incarcerated. Oh you're getting shock incarcerated.
Crap.
But yeah, so what what is the difference just between being incarcerated or going through shock incarceration?
Right?
Right? So proponents will tell you it is somewhat of a Goldielocks zone. You are put in the military kind of you're putting a military themed thing. So the again, on paper, the requirements are less restrictive than actual facts.
Prison shout out to Lure and Vogelbam. We always love crediting a good cats phrase, but it's still more rigorous than something like simple probation, wherein perhaps you take a driving course or a substance abuse or an anger management course, and then you check in, you know, once a month with a probation officer. So it's between those. The term that DOJ often uses is intermediate sanction. This is a
very old idea per the Department of Justice. The first programs of this nature they surfaced in Oklahoma and in stuff they don't want you to Know's home state of Georgia way back in nineteen eighty three. So in a very real sense, Nolan Matt, this has been around for the entirety of you guys left.
Well, and it's like a goal.
You know, you could look at it as a get out of jail free card, like it could be pitched that way, or it's like, okay, you could be getting a four year sentence for some sort of high level drug offense, though non violent but instead you could do this really really just three months, three months or one days three or months or one hundred and eighty days of the most unpleasant conditions you could possibly imagine. And hey,
you might learn something too, you know. Yeah, it's like a very bar again basically, I mean it is in a form of like you know, trying to offer an alternative.
It's an intervention.
There you go, yes, yes, And we'll talk about how it differs in some of the states. There are a few examples we'll tell you about from Missouri where that number, that three months number goes down to one hundred days, to thirty days, to fifteen days, to even two days in prison, with the same concept of you're gonna spend a tiny bit of time in prison to understand what you could get yourself into if you continue down the path,
you know, as some mentor talking to you or something. Sure, but again it's all part of some form of sentencing that is modified.
Modified, yes, not always meaning improved, although that is what they're going for. Yeah, and you know this is not unfamiliar. We could say the stuff they don't want you to know. Extended cinematic universe could have one hell of a video called One Night in gen Pop. But these, yeah, these programs exist. They didn't come out of whole cloth either.
The idea is you're going to scare Usually the way they pitch it is you scare kids straight, but really they mean nonviolent first time offenders, and you do so with aggressive training rehabilitation programs. The better ones will have substance abuse education, psychological treatment, counseling, career development, what we
call community reintegration. Stuff That sounds great. I mean, let's be honest, folks, We've all seen kids headed down the wrong path toward a criminal adulthood and no judgment, fellow conspiracy realist, some of us in the audience tonight have been that kid. The scary thing is, I think everybody, everybody in this country knows the US justice system or penal system is broken. It has a terrible track record, right. Everybody knows that going to prison can sometimes be like
going to crime university. Recidivism is off the charts. So the logic there does feel sound. Getting to kids early, or getting to a nonviolent first time offender early because of one mistake, it can maybe save that individual and save the country overall a lot of heartbreak it's kind of like, you know, investing in community is not politically popular, but it is one of the best long term investments
a government can make. The Hope Scholarship, by the way, I always think of it this way, I'm when I'm talking with folks. The Hope Scholarship, in a very real way, saved a lot of people from getting their radios stolen from their cars because it gave people an alternative to crime.
Oh for sure, yeah, no, it stopped me from stealing radios. Sure, how I got into GSU.
People still steal radios. I guess it's hard.
Out.
Well, they steal radios, but now they're just phones.
There you go.
So in some states, I guess technically, in a lot of states in the US, enrollment in an SI program is sort of voluntary. Like you were saying, no, it's a way to avoid a harsher sentence. You can get sentenced to shock incarceration by a judge the same way you get sentenced to prison. But I believe check me here, guys. I believe that the accused or the defendant does always technically have the right to say no, I don't want ninety days in this boot camp. Send me to prison
for four years. I think they technically have the right to refuse that intermediate sanctuar.
Well, yeah, it is weird because it is the thing that comes during the sentencing part of a trial. Right, So it's after a jury has or a judge has found a defendant guilty. This is when the even even the possibility of some kind of modified shock detention or incarceration is available. There are a couple of specific things we can get into, like one in Missouri that I think would illustrate this a little bit. But my understanding is that the defendant, when being sentenced, has to essentially
agree to it. Like you have to say yes, I will do that, and then I will you spend however many years or months on probation after this shock thing ends.
Right, Yeah, that's correct. That's exactly what we're saying. We've got this. We've got a lot of rights in this country, as we record on Monday, April fourteenth, twenty twenty five. I don't know how that will age. We've got a lot of rights in this country. In a courtroom that a lot of people are not aware of, and think about it, you're at a tremendously stressful moment of your life. It reminds me of there's so many old powerful here.
It reminds me of a thing used to see a lot back in you know, the forties or the fifties, where they would say you can go to prison, or you can enroll in the army and make something of yourself, or you know, the worst case, you can try to get out of the country and join the French Foreign Legion. Hey, there you go, our it's a big dream of ours.
If this podcast stuff doesn't work out, and I can't wait to hear are French foreign llegiate monikers right to us if you ever joined the French Foreign Legion, I would.
Love to hear that. In Missouri there were situations where shocked attention was part of the plea deal that was given the defendants. So it was that kind of if you agree to this as you plead guilty of this crime that we say you've committed, then you know you only spend thirty days in jail and then spend two years on probation.
And it sounds good, but we have to realize there's some devious devil in the detail stuff there, right, because first off, you're admitting to a crime that you may not have committed right, or you don't have the financial wherewithal to get something aside from a public defender. We say that with great affection for public defenders, but their cases, their case loads are harrowing. They're overwhelmed. Right, It's very difficult,
and money does move the justice system. So you're given a choice, like you were saying, Matt, that sounds way better. All I have to do is say, yeah, fine, I am guilty of whatever, right, and in doing so, I can get just ninety days or thirty days or one hundred and eighty days versus a four or five or ten year prison sentence. Sign me up, I can do push ups. I'll make it. Yeah.
It is like a partial NOL kind of thing.
Contendre, which is when you don't say that you're guilty, but you say no. Look at Tidre is going ah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is kind of weird. I think I pled. I've done that before when I got into a car accident when I was a very young kid, because it was that kind of thing where I've never done anything wrong before. But now now I find myself in court because I got into an accident and Okay, plead this thing you get out of it in a different kind of way. But in this case, I mean, it is a little bit it's not exactly the same,
but it does function in the same way. Where it is it is as though you got in trouble and it is on your record in a lot of ways, but it is not the same as spending years in prison for something.
Right. Yeah. One of the big one of the big pulls that people use when they're arguing in favor of this is to say that, uh, it will not interfere with future job prospects as deeply and damaging Lee, I don't know if that's word as as you know prison time will be. And I love I just whisper second this because I love that we have nolo contendre. It's technically illegal plea in the US justice system because it's one hundred percent like being in a long term relationship
and deciding not to argue. Jess, Okay, yeah, fine.
Fine, I did it. Sure, whatever it's my fault.
Will go to whatever restaurant you want, damn. So that is, uh, we're we're providing some levity because we need to have this put simply shocking carceration is legal. Uh, it's a messy bag of badgers. It's a sloppy bull of spaghetti. Because states will have different requirements and metrics and oversight or lack of oversight, and there are also federal programs. It is correctional boot camp, and when it works, it does work. We want to be clear about that. You
can find multiple accounts. You might know some people. You might be a person who went through this, and you might credit a lot of your modern success to that experience. It's just like that old trope we all heard of the bad kid getting sent off to military school, right, and later he becomes a general the hollow threat.
Well yeah, maybe except when it's not and then they become a general. But I swear every time I bring this topic up and talk to people about this podcast that I've been working on, the first question they ask is I'm sorry, what and is that that's legal? And yeah, it is legal. I mean it's shocking, pun totally intended. When you hear about this and think that it seems like such a weird kind of cruel workaround, like almost
like humiliating in a way. I don't know, it's very very interesting, very much So I mean, here's the issue. These programs when they spread, you could almost call it in some ways, the social dynamic in the zeitgeist is similar to a moral panic, right like the Satanic panic. People were saying, Hey, we gotta you know, crime is through the roof, We gotta nip this in the bud. So these programs are tough on crime, but they're still compassionate, again,
a phrase we'll go back to pretty often. However, to your point in all these programs are not without controversy. Want to give a shout out to an adjacent show. If you're interested in this idea of scaring kids straight and what can go wrong, please check out Camp Hell. It is a show in our network exploring the Anawaki
treatment Center for emotionally disturbed youth in Douglasville, Georgia. And just like these SI boot camps, there's a troubling lack of transparency and accountability in a lot of these programs.
And Annawaki or Camp Hell, that show hosted by Josh than Is. It's a fascinating case because that place, that physical rehabilitation camp out or wilderness camp as they called it, has been around since the nineteen sixties, and it wasn't. It was just kind of a thing that you could send quote troubled youth to as part of sentencing that was occurring in Georgia. People get sentenced there. It was
also happening. They had camps at Florida and a couple other places New Mexico, and they these would be like work camps basically where you would be put to hard labor and then go, you know, sleep in a bunk somewhere. In that case, just if you do end up going down the route and listening to camp, there was a whole lot of child sexual abuse and other stuff going on at all of the camps. Actually they were run by the people who ran in Awaki.
Yeah, it's not a story that's appropriate for maybe the kiddos in the crowd, but it is a story that needs to be told, and we're proud that it's out there in the world. And you know that illustrates another point, Matt. Not all of these camps, these SI facilities are created equally. Some are more therapeutic or rehabilitative. Others seem to focus entirely on harsh physical exercise discipline, doing drills over and over and over again, because you can't call them choreography
in the military. You have to call them drills, sort of like how a G. I. Joe is an action figure and not a doll anyway, So there are few dependable, robust statistics on how we would measure a success rate, how we would measure the effects of recidivism, how many institutions are open, or the numbers of deaths that occur at these facilities. That's right, deaths. Some are out in
the open and have been admitted. Some have been explained away through nebulous things like undiagnosed medical condition or overdose. Some are we maintain simply covered up. So what do you say, guys, you want to take a word from our sponsors and then dive in.
Sounds good.
Here's where it gets crazy. There are immensely troubling statistics and there are tendencies to paint with a broad brush. So to be quite clear, when we say first time non violent offenders, yes, folks in the specific boot camps are typically under the age of thirty. They're not all children. And again, all these things are not created equally. So for instance, you might spend a weekend in jail, right, which is way different from being carted off to a
place for a summer, for sure. So why are these statistics troubling when we talk about statistics.
Well, the statistics that I've been looking at for this are really focused on recidivism. Right, So, if a first time offender goes through this shock detention program shock incarceration, do they have the same chance of returning back to prison at some point as somebody who went through a regular what they would call just being incarcerated. Right, That's
what everybody seems to be focused on. And as we dive into some of the numbers here, we find that the recidivism rates officially, at least in states like Missouri a couple of other places, the rates are just a tiny bit lower than regular old incarceration going to prison for years.
Well, and the problem is it's it's just not particularly transparent. I mean, there aren't any very robust statistics at all about how many of these boot camps exist in.
The United States.
And this, to your point, Matt, is a function of the kind of amorphous state by state legislation and paired with the you know, kind of I don't know, not particularly streamline federal version of the programs.
M and so if you jump to Missouri, they you can. The New York University Law Review talked about this way back in eight you guys, and they were looking at recidivism rates at that time of the shock programs that
exist specifically for DWI offenders. And so they took DWI offenders, which make up six point seven percent of all of the quote offender population in Missouri, and when they looked at the recidivism rates of all of those people in that population, they found that a standard prison year term four years, had roughly a thirty one percent recidivism rate, but the one hundred and twenty day shock program had about a twenty three point six percent recidivism rate, which is,
you know, lowered by five percent roughly or something. Which is that you know, is that statistically different?
Well, I mean.
Statistics about incarceration and about you know, rehabilitation. I guess the integration back into societies have seemed to me to always struggle with, you know, truly being able to pull out the reality of the situation out of those numbers, just because of so many kind of intervening factors that aren't a parent, that aren't kind of readily apparent I don't know.
It just seems to me. No, yeah, yeah, I agree with you know, like this sounds. Look, we're not casting aspersion on whomever wrote the report in Missouri. The question Matt you're having is is this statistically significant? And what you're saying no, is yeah, it's difficult to tell because of all those intervening variables. And this goes to our further point that there are, like the headline word here is overall there are no genuine statistics and metrics available
for these programs. Overall. You will find state by state stuff. Missouri's one example. I've been very deep into the Florida Horrors and New York state as well. They're like, you can find examples of this everywhere, but what you cannot find is an overall robust, objective view of the forest. Oh yeah, because it does not exist.
Oh, you're right. But one thing I wanted to bring up with this, guys, is that that same study that I was looking at, or a review, I suppose it found that the recidivism rate of those who just received probation and received no prison sentence had a recidivism rate of around eighteen point four percent. So like that to me, is significantly lower.
But the question then becomes too, is is that because this was someone who made a single mistake and got caught and it really spooked them, And that's sort of the scenario. I mean, does that imply like low level offenses in general are going to likely lead to a lower recidivism, right, because it seems like there's.
A line, there's an endog to these I think kind of actions.
You know, yeah, I think it applies most apparently it implies the importance of environment community. So if if someone has some cannabis and they get too much cannabis or whatever, because that's another state by state bag of badgers, and they get locked up, then they are put in an environment that they are not accustomed to, right, and an environment that prioritizes and rewards different things, things that are
not prioritized and rewarded in a civilian community. So I would argue, if you have someone on probation instead of in jail, they still are able to see their family, They're still able to sleep safely at night, I'll say it, They're able to stay a part of society, hold down a job, sure, And this I think is a primary difference. Now, obviously We're not saying everybody should get on probation other
than Luigi Mangioni. We do know a great deal of people forced in these SI shock incarceration programs will tend to be described as ethnic minorities in this country, and it's important to remember, you know, we get a little more US centric that i'd like on this show, but it's important to remember that things like shock incarceration exist
the world round. They are in programs like this or multiple countries, but the US in particular seems to there's a question for you guys, why in like twenty ten, some of the most recent stats we have, why in twenty ten we're eighty percent of the inmates or enrollees in these programs considered ethnic minorities. I think it's a knock on result of the justice system targeting minorities in the first place.
Absolutely, well, yeah, And it's also like.
It's a similar situation to maybe the way it once was, and I'm not speaking to maybe there's been changes in this and it seems like that's likely, but where like the army was only an option for less privileged folks or like, and that would ultimately some statistically speaking, boil down to being identified as ethnic minorities, you know. I mean, it's just it's an interesting conundrum because yeah.
And i'd like people, you know, I'm going to just throw this pop up soapbox real quick. I would like the Americans to start describing ourselves in terms of the financial minority or the financial majority, because I think the class war is real.
And I agree, And I only even bring in the race element is because of the way the statistics work and the way that these things are described, you know, in these kinds of studies and in news soundbites. You know, I mean, over the years especially, it seems like.
I'm with you.
Yeah, I don't know, because you're right, it is. Yes, it is a haves and have nots situation. And then it's also about opportunity versus you know, lack of opportunity.
Yeah, like you said, environment, right, Because people are people all the world around. Is how their power systems treat them that makes all the difference. I love that we're talking history here because we need to understand how the US got to this situation in the first place. As we noted at the top, the modern version of these programs begins in the nineteen eighties here in Georgia and in Oklahoma. And it doesn't come from nothing. It comes as a response to a crisis, very much an act
now situation. Yeah, one hundred percent. So when these programs begin in the nineteen eighties, the authorities are at a crossroads or at what George Bush would have called a decision point. Due to the War on Crime, there's been a phenomenal growth in the prison industry and a phenomenal growth in the number of people getting convicted. So if you are a if you are a court of law, wherever you may be, your prison systems are severely overcrowded.
If you are pushing people toward probation, right, which to that earlier point is an awesome intervention, then you're seeing so many people assigned to probation that probation officers are barely able to touch base, you know what I mean. They're like, hey, here's a three minute phone call or whatever.
Well, yeah, and there are even versions of probation that are unsupervised that basically just say, hey, if you get in trouble again, it's jail time. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, you're on probation. But you know, nobody's going to be checking in on you.
Ever, Yeah, honor system probation. Just try not to be a criminal for the next year.
Well, that's a thing, especially for younger for some of vendors.
Sure, especially if they have a good case of a like a solid community, they seem to have supportive family structure, things like that. There are a lot of there are a lot of we call them intervening variables earlier, but maybe we could call them soft variables because sometimes it comes it comes down to the judge.
Well in their opinion, is there a statistic for supportive mom and dad?
You know what I mean?
Like, how does that not really translate to to you know, to this kind of the way is the way of pie charting things out?
You know, Yeah, because back in the day it was supposed to be like a nuclear family, and they treated children or single parents as though they were inherently somehow inferior, which could not be further from the truth.
Let's go to another thing we were talking about, guys. So this concept of in the nineteen eighties, there's an influx of prisoners, largely due to the War on drugs, that thing that we've talked about many a time there, especially under President Reagan's I was gonna say rain.
Yeah, war on crime going all the way back to LBJs.
Oh yeah, exactly exactly. But this is the same time that the private prison system gets really big, right, or because it's the private prison system, I didn't realize it goes back to California in the freaking eighteen hundreds. But private prisons become a big deal because there's so many inmates, people who are potential inmates, who are on their way to prison, but there's no place to house them. So then corporations come in and say, oh, well, we'll make some money.
Here, so we have we see there a financial incentive, and it's one that haunts the United States in the modern day. Right, A third party private entity comes along and says, oh, you guys are looking kind of busy. You know, we can we can help out with this for a very reasonable percentage.
The not much different than the way prison contracts work.
It's one hundred percent exactly the way person contracts work. Yeah, I agree with you. And so these authorities are saying, how do we The language they use over and over in the eighties is manage how do we manage offenders? Do we send more people to prison and just you know, keep throwing money into the coffers of private prison industries and entities. Do we try to spend more money on
probation programs. Neither option, it turns out, is a good fit for this ground swell of juvenile first time offenders in particular. And we have to make another point. We're
talking off Mike about this. It's an ugly point people don't always want to hear, but at this juncture, the boffins and the eggheads and the DOJ folks realized that many young offenders had parents who were or had been incarcerated, and from there, from the perspective of researchers and authorities, this prompts a great concern about what they would call
intergenerational criminality. So they're searching for new ways to get in front of this right to stop what they see as dangerous patterns over time, and they look at what they would call intermediate sanctions. This is stuff like intensive community supervision, right, hands on probation right or house arrest. Did you guys ever know anyone on house arrest.
Never got to see one of those ankle bracelets?
Those are pretty cool.
The stuff of lore now I think, I mean, it's very much real, But no, I never did know anybody directly. I know people who have been through like halfway house type systems or like mandatory you know, rehabilitation like for you know, drug abuse and stuff like that, which they probably get you know, paid like as contractors as well, those types of facilities. Then that can also be a term of one's release, as being spending a certain amount of time in a you know, an environment like that.
Yeah, residential community.
And a lot of these shock programs even have stuff that is essentially rehabilitation programs built into them, right, especially for again DWI offenders in some states. For it's not perfect at all, my god, it's not perfect. Well we can talk about that more, but those systems are in
there as a way. Again, it gets so muddy because there are those kind of systems, those vocational systems that we were talking about at the top of this right, trying to help especially younger people or people who are just who appear to be off the right path, get them to a job, get them off drugs, get them the help that they would receive in a place that is not prison. But it's being done through the prison system.
Right, Yeah, the idea being that you don't hit day ninety one and just get a Greyhound ticket off to the wild yonder. You have some kind of infrastructure to support and indeed guide you right toward assimilation, because a
lot of this is about assimilation into society. And so at this time, at this juncture in the nineteen eighties, out of all the stuff they're evaluating, the house arrest probation, the like you said, NOL, the halfway house approaches, boot camps, these SI programs, they take the lead because they're comparatively inexpensive and the optics feel right for the time, I'll say it once again, ostensibly compassionate, yet's still tough on crime, right,
And it's really feeding into that powerful trope that the electorate loves, which is send this bad person to the military. That will straighten them out. They'll learn discipline, they'll march in time and in step. And the problem is sometimes a thing can sound like a really good idea without actually being a good idea at all. Georgia and Oklahoma, oh man, they make so much news when they have this stuff in the nineteen eighties.
Yeah, let's teach these recidivous and responsibility make them valuable members of the community. It's also like so sort of a good pr move for the complaints or the criticism.
That there is no rehabilitation in prison. This is like an answer to that, right.
No.
Look, see, we're actually teaching them values, We're teaching them how.
To work hard and all of that stuff.
On this episode of Doctor Phil, the drill instructor speaks to bad Barbie or whatever.
You mentioned it once at the top Bend.
But I guess a lot of these types of situations were depicted on some of these daytime shows, and they had these little recurring bits where they would send the bad kids to the boot camp or military school and then march them back out at the end, do the before and after kind of treatment, right.
Mm hmm, yeah, Yeah, you'll love to see it if you're a TV producer. By nineteen ninety nine, multiple other states are in the game. They're following the lead in Georgia and Oklahoma. There are more than fifty boot camps established. They house round a little more than four thousand, five hundred juveniles specifically. That doesn't count all first time non violent offenders. Again, some who maybe is maybe in their twenties. That doesn't count the federal programs that are on the way.
It's just it's a little more than a decade in. And the proponents are loving this. They argue there are statistically significant reduction rates when it comes to recidivism, but it's already an open secret that these places can be dangerous, even deadly. So I suggest we take a pause for a word from our sponsors and get into the abuse, the controversies, the deaths.
And we're back, and we promised some examples of how these types of programs can go horribly wrong despite the on paper best intentions of it all and the optics that we were talking about about, how no, look, this is a great program that's helping, you know, rehabilitate people, teach them skills, teach them discipline, and then reintegrate them back in soocide and we're so good at it that we can accomplish what would a normal prison sentence of four years.
We're going to get that done in ninety days, you know.
And also, as a way of saying, this is better.
Than the alternative, long term incarceration is just yielding more repeat offenders.
This is different.
I'm just I'm laughing because when you said that, Noel, I'm picturing a DOJ report called we're so good at this.
Yeah, exactly, we did a good job.
We did a good job, five stars to us, So you're you're absolutely nailing it. Man. These camps are based on military tactics, and any of our friends, neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists who have had the privilege of attending one of our fine nations military intake programs, you know they're designed to break you down, like they're not designed to make you feel great about yourself on the first day. These programs, these SI shock incarceration programs, aren't that different.
Anybody who's been to boot camp knows the first day sucks by design. It sucks so hard. The drill instructors, oh we don't call them guards, right, they're instructors. They confront you as a as a first day inmate of one of these SI programs. You're given rapid orders about how you can speak, when you can speak, what are the rules, how do you talk to the instructors? How do you standard attention?
No you're doing that wrong.
No, you're doing that wrong. No, you're doing that Wrong's it's a gish gallop kind of thing where they're just yelling at you gallop. It's a rhetorical device, gish. It's a rhetorical device that help you spot someone who is bad at arguing or arguing in bad faith. Because it's where it might be familiar to some opponents of the current administration. It's where you say a bunch of crazy shit and and you say so much that you try to shock and awe just it's like using a flash
pod in Monster Hunter Wild. You know that it's got what's going on. I don't know which way is up. But it's designed in these SI programs, especially that first day, it's designed so that you will mess up, so that you will not be able to successfully get things correct. And this is co ed stuff. Men will have their head shaved, women will get, you know, a short military haircut, and it is meant to intimidate you. It is meant to frighten you, to scare you straight. The situation does
not improve as time passes. Do we want to talk about like a typical day, so we get a sense of what life is like for these folks in SI programs.
Yeah, if you're in one of the military versions of these types of programs. You get up before dawn, you get dressed, you clean your quarters, You march around, usually as an exercise, but also as you know, the discipline stuff. You spend several hours doing all kinds of other exercises like calisthenics.
Oh yeah, yeah, right, and I believe during breakfast there's no talking aloud. There's some pretty specific guidelines around communicating with fellow cadets.
I guess you could call them from there.
You got about six to eight hours of actual hard labor, physical labor.
Yeah, this is like what people would experience at campaign awaki. This is very similar like building things. You might go out, you might be constructing. It's usually instructing something in camp an Awakei's case, it was constructing something on the camp, like around the lake, or something that will eventually be used by all of your other fellow people.
Well that, yeah, that's weirdly enough, that's the positive end of the spectrum. Public improvement or work that actually matters, right, like cleaning state parks, or if you're ever driving on a road in the US and you see people maybe wearing the orange vest right picking up trash on the side of the highway, spoiler, they're not always volunteers moved by a sense of public good or the tragedy of the commons. These would be called public improvements in state
parks and cleaning highways. On a negative note, this kind of public improvement labor has been repeatedly cited as modern slavery. It's a story for another day, And I propose we do a future episode on inmate rights in America for sure.
Absolutely, yeah, it comes up plenty in terms of just regular conversation around the prison system. We talked actually recently, we talked about the fire fighting program there in California and how and we got some really excellent correspondents from folks on the inside of that saying, yeah, this is a positive thing. This can be a way of really changing my life and turning you know, learning a thing and contributing.
But then there's the flip side of it, which can be yeah, sketch slavery. My favorite, I love you that you mentioned that. No, h my favorite, My favorite piece of correspondence we received from that is still our fellow conspiracy realist who described himself as an exotic landscaper.
There you go, Yeah that one, Yeah, that was great. Well, when we made Anna Waki, we talked to several folks who who could not say more positive things about their time at the camp and doing the hard labor, and how it was the most positive thing they'd ever experienced in their life because of where they came from. So not exclusively because of where they came from, but because they said it was a positive experience overall for them. So it is one of those things like it sometimes is both.
Yeah, it turns out that humans are individuals, so applying the same brute force broadbrush tactics to people will not yield the same results across the board. That's true. And if we're following the day here, we'll fast forward. Like we said, they're working until call it late afternoon. Late afternoon comes, you are doing more exercises, drills, you're rehearsing ceremonies because sometimes there's a graduation ceremony and your family's
invited to attend. And then again, like we said earlier, you march in step to dinner. No conversation at dinner. By the way, after you eat, a lot of places will have the I keep saying, kids, I know that's not the entirety of the demographic here. But a lot of these folks are to they are teens. They attend, if they go to a good one, they attend rehab programs until about twenty one hundred and at that point
at nine pm Local. At that point they have a brief period of time to do everything they can to get ready for tomorrow. This is rinse and repeat, And during all of these days they are quite possibly abused for the entire time. Like the guards, we get to notable cases. There's a great piece from a great series of pieces by a journalist called Carrie Blakeinger. She writes in particular about the Lakeview Shock Incarceration correctional facility there in New York, and she writes a lot about shock
incarceration in New York State overall. And she has some harrowing stuff when she's talking. When she's writing about c there are saxby Smith's time in an SI facility. Maybe we could just pull a few quotes to give people the way of the land here.
Yeah, So the guards are known as instructors, like you mentioned, are known to be verbally abusive, at the very least psychologically abusive, as Carrie Blankinger puts it, writing about Miss Saxby Smith's time and the lake Viewshock Incarceration Correctional Facility for NBC. Guards taunted prisoners, calling them junkies and bad mothers, and made prisoners wear embarrassing signs. See there's the humiliation stuff. Comes in and eat food off the floor. What is
this guantanamo? Sometimes prisoners spent hours moving log piles or cleaning sidewalks with toothbrushes full little jackets.
Yeah, let's pause there, because this is the psyop aspect of it. When you make people, when you force people to labor, and you force them to do so with the clear recognition that what they are doing does not matter and is meaningless and useless. This is a time tested torture tactic.
No question about it. And she goes on.
Once Saxby Smith said, a woman got caught passing a note, so guards made her whole dorm walk in circles holding mattresses on their heads for ten hours until their scalps bled.
Let that sink in. Just the humiliation of all of this is what strikes me.
This is like some sadistic hazing type stuff, not just traditional military drills. And we know mazing occurs in the military, but this seems like out in the open.
I don't know.
Yeah, and it just I wanna bore us with personal anecdotes because it's incredibly dangerous and damaging to engage in that tactic, useless work, useless force labor. It's it's a thing that still happens. And to your point, Noel, it is part it can be part of military hazing. Uh, it can be part of all sorts of organizations. And this, as you were saying, this does not sound rehabilitative. This does not sound like someone sitting down and saying I'm gonna give you some tough love to help you get
on you know, the quote unquote right path. This is pretty beat me here, Andrew, this is pretty evil, is it not?
I would say it very much is apologies.
I sound like I'm yelling.
Man.
Sorry, Yeah, I mean it's wild.
This is a Marquis de Sade level, Like what is that film Solo where there's a certain it's apparently not for the faint of heart. I actually haven't seen it, but it is a Passolini film that depicts a very military like, kind of regimented form of absolute humiliation and abuse.
It sounds like this, it's just a boring, it's unclean, it's.
It sounds like a messed up individual or several individuals who are power hungry who are operating at that one facility. That's what sounds like to me, and it makes me wonder how much of that goes on? Are there other instances of stuff like this happening?
Are the right?
Sorry, I mean no, no, I think I think that's a good I think that's a good step back toward a middle ground, right, because it may not be the it may not. We're not saying everybody involved in this stuff is a villain, obviously, and we hope that as a parent. But to that point about bad faith actors finding an environment where they can successfully function as predators. You see that in religion, You of course see that in government, you see that in you see that in friend groups, right.
I mean, we talked about so many different versions of that where people find their way in where especially if they're young, people that are vulnerable, those individuals will make their way.
Rehab facilities another great example. And so that's why I think it's quite important that we pointed out the necessity of metrics or robust studies, which don't really exist for a lot of this stuff. And when we're talking about these cases, even people who say it changed their life for the better, they do recall exactly what you are describing. No name calling, humiliation, emotional up to physical abuse by
correction staff. And by physical abuse, yes, we mean some of the worst stuff you can imagine happening to a person, acts that would be considered violent crimes on the outside. Just to snapshot New York State alone, in twenty thirteen, there were reports of sexual assault carried out by one of the instructors. Right, no, we call them instructors right now, charge, Okay, okay, Yeah. This triggered a series of sexual abuse allegations across not
just Lakeview, but the entirety of New York State. Fast forward twenty seventeen. An officer there at Lakeview, James Bean Junior, is charged with the sexual assault of an inmate at the facility, and the allegations keep coming as recently as twenty twenty.
That's right.
A federal law suit against Lakeview cited five separate incidents in which a female inmate was sexually assaulted and a correction officer attempted to cover the whole thing up, hide all evidence. That the attack took place, and in multiple cases this behavior exhibited by instructors or guards seemed to have add to actual deaths of.
Inmates that were, you know, incarcerated in these programs. Yeah, Jamel McIntosh was assigned to lake View's intensive alcohol and substance abuse treatment program, found dead in his cell in twenty twenty. The case continues, and this occurred after the infamous case of Martin Lee Anderson. This is a kid. That is why the kid part is important to us here. This is a fourteen year old from Florida dies while incarcerated in Panama City, Florida at the Bay County Boots Camp.
The death of Martin Lee Anderson create a like moves public sentiment. The public used to be for these things, Now they're increasingly against it because children are dying there, right, and there are not many things a fourteen year old should or can do that would qualify them to be murdered by the state, agreed for sure. And this, I mean, there's so much more. Each of those is an episode on its own, But maybe we talked about the implications and the future as we wrap up this EFT.
Well, yeah, let's quickly talk about when this gets instituted as part of sentencing. Because there's some weird I don't know why. My search history is all about Missouri. I found most of the cases that I could find, like specific cases where shocked detention was used coming out of Missouri. For some reason, I have no idea why. But here
are a bunch of examples. A forty two year old woman that was she pled guilty to two different assault charges, and she was sentenced to one hundred and twenty days of shock detention. And this takes place in a prisons so like in a Coal county jail there in Missouri. So it's just a whole it's a whole different system I think they have in Missouri. I don't know if they send people to a specific place like Lakeview like these, but they do appear to, at least during sentencing, to
be sent to a county jail. There's another person, a forty year old man who broke parole and he got sentenced to one hundred and twenty days of shock incarceration there in Missouri in Sheridan County, so undred and twenty days. And then you've got a child who was texting and driving she caused a fatal crash killed a woman driving her car while her grandchild was in the back, and she spent She officially got sentenced to two days of shock time in a jail, which, again, like I don't
understand how that works. I don't understand why it's so different. But there is one major notable case that I think we should talk about because how does shock and car ration actually help this situation. You can do a quick Google search if you're you know, if you're able to right now for Phi Gamma Delta. This is a fraternity at the University of Missouri. They have chapters all over the place, but the specific one at the University of
Missouri was doing some hazing as they do. As they had a new group of people who were pledging to come in. And this young man, Danny Santouli that's how you say his name. He was nineteen years old. The frat guys there who were in charge of that specific fraternity, Fi Gamma Delta, instituted a thing where everybody had to drink as much alcohol as they could. Danny drank a
whole bunch. He got alcohol poisoning, passed out, and then stopped breathing while he was there after fraternity, somebody calls nine to one one, he gets picked up. He's undergoing cardiac arrest on his way to the hospital, gets there, he ends up having severe brain damage. He loses the ability to walk and talk and is forever you know. Oh and also he loses sight because of this alcohol poisoning.
So the reason why I'm bringing up is because the sentencing that was twenty twenty one, by the way, when that happened, the sentencing for the kids, I mean they're mostly kids or very young men, right, who are there at this fraternity doing this hazing. Many of them they got plea deals, several of them for fifteen days in jail, at least one for thirty days in jail. But again it's through these shock detention programs, so it's not just going to jail for thirty days. It's whatever this shock
treatment program is. But how does that fix these fraternity brothers who just made a bunch of other mostly young men their age, to drink a bunch I guess just it's it. It's a weird gray area to me, I don't understand how it actually helps.
No, it's for kicks sick twisted kicks man that's what it feels to me. Gosh, like, that's there's no excuse for any that's just there's no world in which that is going to yield positive results. Can you imagine too, if these people were, like, you know, predisposed or even had struggled with substance abuse addiction problems.
Yeah, it's so cruel.
I just can't. I mean, yeah, I think it. Just to interject here, one of the things that that really sticks out here is the question of who does it help? And that's really where the conspiracy hinges on. Is it meant to help the public? Is it meant to help the the inmates or the people who are even Oh, by the way, we didn't mention this. In a lot of these places, folks who need psychological medication or even just basic physical medication for diabetes or whatnot are denied
that medication. That's a known problem in the system. If we were to look at the money and ask ourselves, qui bono, who benefits, then we would see that the people who tend to benefit the most are the politicians pushing for these programs because they're fantastic for reelection, or they were up until about two thousand oh.
Yeah, oh yeah, well and just dude, yes, absolutely, Just to put a tiny bit more context on that fraternity case, most of the things that people were being charged for were misdemeanors, which hold a maximum of thirty days in the shock incarceration for a misdemeanor. So it does make me wonder just about like, thirty days in jail for a misdemeanor. Doesn't that feel I don't know. I don't know if that feels like much like too much or not. I honestly don't know.
It's a long month, man, it feels like it to me, especially.
If they're undergoing the stuff that we're talking about that goes on a lakeview, right.
Yeah, and multiple other places. While this practice has been newly re examined, we know that multiple states have pulled away from advocating for shock incarceration. The research that exists simply does not support the notion that shock programs work measurably, predictably better than, as we said earlier, regular prison. Instead, studies show the combative style of counseling that these programs rely on is pretty ineffective. It reminds me of the
great in a way. It reminds me of that great controversy where a psychological patient died while they were trying to like reenact their birth. Yeah, you know about where they like hold you down under a blanket and you have to struggle to be born. Is that is that's the sort of team building exercise.
What is that about?
Well, a result in the death of someone. We'll follow up. We'll follow up in the next episode just to just to cite that specifically. But this, this is the thing. It's still it's based on troops. Right, We're gonna scare you straight, We're gonna put you in the military, give you some structure. Troops are powerful, and it does sound great for reelection campaigns, but in this case, it appears being tough on crime all too often means an excuse to be a monster that feels like the stuff they
don't want you to know. We want to hear your opinions. We've endeavored to be very fair and fact based in our exploration here, so please do tell us what's on your mind. Find us on the phone, find us via email, find us on the lines. It's right.
You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy on XFKA, Twitter and on YouTube where we have video content Glora for you to enjoy. On Instagram and TikTok. However, we're Conspiracy Stuff show and there's more.
We have a phone number. It is one eight three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we can use your name and message on the air. Guys, really quickly before I jump off here, there's one thing I forgot to mention about the whole Danny situation. There's a new bill in Missouri called Danny's Law, and the father of Danny just spoke at the Missouri State House
of Representatives to push for this Danny's Law. It's really interesting. I think you'll like it. Let us know what you think. Maybe it is. The concept is to protect anyone who is in a situation who then calls nine to one one to get assistance for somebody, especially in a hazing situation. It protects the person who finally raises a hand and says, hey, something wrong, something's going wrong here.
So similar to like a Good Samaritan law.
Very similar. I think it's specifically for university hazing and that kind of thing. Anyway, give us a call, Tell tell us what you think. Maybe you don't want to give us a call, Maybe you want to send us a good old fashioned email.
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