Ed Pilkington visited JRC

The Guardian's New York Correspondent, Ed Pilkington, visited JRC back in March of 2011 and wrote this report.  It's definitely worth reading.  The one part that really struck me was the description of the founder, Matthew Israel.  The school was essentially founded back in 1971.  Dr Israel was very much influenced by B. F. Skinner and his book Walden Two

...in which he envisaged a fictitious community of 1,000 people engineered to produce the happiest and most efficient society. Every activity in the community is shared, from child rearing to cooking and manual labour. Positive emotions are rewarded and negative ones discouraged; meanwhile, children are given rigorous ethical training to turn them into model citizens.

This would explain the bizarre nature of the school, such as the Wizard of Oz themed reward center.  If you haven't seen those photos, you should scroll through them to get a sense of the creepiness that I mentioned in an earlier post.

History is riddled with utopian idealists acting as dictators for the "good" of society

Note that Matthew Israel was forced to step down from his position at JRC.

...there was enough evidence that the grand jury indicted Israel Friday on two counts related to misleading a witness and destroying evidence. Cunha said his office ultimately decided to offer Israel a pretrial probation agreement, in which Israel had to permanently end his tenure at the center, which he founded 40 years ago, and serve a five-year probationary term. If he complied, prosecutors would drop the case in five years.

What bothers me is that just like the Andre McCollins case, nothing was actually resolved.