SUWS (The School of Urban and Wilderness Survival) is an old wilderness therapy program.

History

It started out as a outdoor education program but did develop into a desert boot camp.

The first program for detainees aged 14 to 18 was started in 1981 in Idaho. In 1997 they started a second program for a younger target-group. In 2000 a program was started in North Carolina.

In 2006 they began to market a program aimed against children with Aspergers diseases which they felt could benefit with being waken in the middle of the night by escorts and experience some weeks in uncertainty about returning to their home [1].

Program Structure

Admission

There are three ways for the detainees to arrive to the place for the intake.

1. The detainees can travel there voluntary
2. Children are tricked there. According to Strugglingteen.com, which is a kind of marketing paper for the industry, it is not seldom to receive a child with a newly bought snowboard in his or her hand, when the child is received at the airport. The parents simply trick the child into a belief that the child is going on holiday rather than being banished to the wilderness until the child has been reprogrammed so the parents can forgive the child [2].
3. They use teen escort firms. Without trial parents can banish their offspring to live in the desert as long as their wallet last.

Two different Programs

The various programs in Idaho and South Carolina varies a little.

The Idaho program has the following levels:

Level	Idaho	South Carolina	Description
1	Safety:	Satety:	The goal is to make the detainee accept that they are detained there and learn them some basic wilderness skills.
2	Individual:	Individual	The detainee sits alone with some with some written assignments. The isolation from their normal social network and very little feedback from the group during this phase is designed to break the detainee into admit some kind of wrong-doing.
3	Family	Community	This phase focused of interacting with the other detainees. However. Isolation from the group is still used a punishment. If a detainee miss a daily task, the next day there are treated as being back on the individual phase.
4	Venturer Explorer Navigator Guide	Responder
5	Search & Rescue	Search & Rescue
6		Family program

	Gregory Owen Jones -aged 13. On July 3 - 1985 died under the mandatory and at that time necessary "walk with out water", which were used in order to motivate students to adapt to the program faster. Due to heat wave in the area the first two waterholes were empty and Mr. Jones collapsed and died on the way to waterhole no. three.
	Rocco Magliozzi - aged 12  died July 2006 when he contracted the West Nile Virus. The virus was known to exist in the area but the wilderness program continued to send children out there [4].