Puppies at Oak Hill?
This morning Marc Fisher wrote about the struggles of Vincent Schiraldi to change the culture of Oak Hill, the District's youth detention center in Laurel, Md. It was classic Fisher—a finely told tale with some nice wit and a sharp point of view. It didn't really get a rise from me, though, till the very end, when the columnist revealed the following:
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier is planning to give Oak Hill kids puppies to engender empathy and responsibility. Hey, it's worth a try.
Sorry, but count me among those who don't favor sending puppies to Oak Hill. Puppies are incredibly high-maintenance; Oak Hill staff is already busy with all kinds of responsibilities. Puppies are very messy; who's going to clean up their messes? Puppies have to be house-trained (facility-trained?); does Oak Hill allow the freedom of movement necessary to accomplish such training?
I favor the more humane approach of Schiraldi to dealing with D.C.'s troubled youth, but I must confess that I worry for the puppies.
10:59 am
Is the Washington City Paper taking a pro-puppies position?? What's next, support for fuzzy bunny wabbits and rainbow elves? You guys are supposed to be hardcore, dammit. The hell with puppies, chubby little wiggling emotionally manipulative bastards!
But seriously: While I agree with all your concerns, these puppies-in-the-pen programs have been known to work wonders. Prisons and juvie centers across the country have set up animal care/training programs for the inmates/kids, to the benefit of both -- not only do they tend to make the environment better for the inmates, they consequentially make it better for the staff, too. The Nevada State Prison system works with the Nevada Humane Society on one of these deals; under supervision from the shelter's behaviorist, shelter dogs get training from inmates that makes them more adoptable. When I talked to the head warden in Carson City a few years back, he said that both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-guard violence had decreased massively since the dog/puppy training program had started.
That said, when the programs aren't carefully supervised, there have been injuries to humans and animals alike, and a couple of really icky instances of animal sexual abuse by participants who weren't adequately monitored. If Lanier follows through on this, hopefully the program will involve more than just dropping off a box of puppies at Oak Hill as though they were muffins.