This is not a forensic psych ward. The only way to get into those is to commit an actual serious crime, which is pretty hard to do before you're 18 years old.

This environment is referred to as "closed", sometimes even "semi-closed". There's also "open" and "semi-open", but almost everyone runs away. You see, social workers' theories ... don't work. Don't help. And kids realize this pretty quickly. The only kids you see there are the ones they've suddenly kidnapped for 2 weeks to "closed", scared into behaving for a while. This works the first time, and kids that have nowhere to go at all (whom they kick to the sidewalk on their 18th birthday. Best hope you don't have your final school exams after your birthday ... because how will you ever do that?). The vast majority of kids are there (in open or closed) because they refuse social worker's help. This can mean getting placed by a judge in foster care and running away. This can mean systematically not turning up for "help sessions" at school (that was my "crime"). This can mean avoiding "in-house" help. In general kids get locked up because they make a social workers' job impossible. Which is ironic, because that is also the only way out.

And social workers lie. They are judged by how many kids they "helped" and so if the situation becomes truly untenable they send you home. You see, they lie you're cured. The advantage is that it's pretty hard to get punished for doing things wrong there. So you eventually realize that making the situation totally untenable is the way to get out. First thing I tried was to simply fight directly. I started fighting sports at age 3, and they tried to attack. I knocked 3 of them out and they decided to wait me out, which succeeded after more than a day. Next I decided the best tactic is to simply wait for a situation to turn violent. You won't have to wait long. And then figure out how to prevent social workers from helping each other, from fixing the situation, making everything go as bad as possible, without being even remotely responsible. Stand in the way. Make them trip. Close the right door at exactly the wrong time. For that they started to try to bribe me (e.g. a key, access to the "library" (a few dozen comicbooks and one programming book I brought. Of course no computer. I still know that book by hard) including at night, access to the kitchen). Then I figured out how to disappear, with a girl, for a few days. Just because these buildings are closed doesn't mean there are no places to hide. Social workers are total morons. We came back when we ran out of food. I was home before dinner.

The only case I heard of where a kid was sent to forensic psych from this was one that put a plastic utensil (he broke it in two and used the sharp edge) through the throat of a fresh intern. She lived, btw. For that, he was sent there for 2 weeks. They made some excuse for sending him home after 2 weeks, something to the tune of "it's not meants as a punishment and should not be used like that".

All social workers' help is a punishment.

Oh, and that's not because they don't want to keep kids in forensic psych. But the whole point of social workers' infrastructure is to provide maximum comfortable jobs for social workers. The whole system doesn't work. I've never met anyone who was actually helped (of course everyone lies to get out, or even to get back in as a social worker themselves). Forensic psych is ridiculously expensive per kid (> 200k per kid per year), and so kills jobs for social workers. Oh, and because you can imagine how violent that is, nobody wants to work in a place with kids that were probably pretty bad before social workers inflicted their torture on them (sorry "help them"). Even in "closed", kids learn to attack, first psychologically, then physically social workers literally before they've said a word to them. Because otherwise ...

I'm pretty used to "opinions" like yours. People have no idea how social workers actually do things, and they don't want to. If you have a discussion like this, nearly always people don't even realize this even exists.