You hit the nail on the head gonaads.
It's all about moderation.
We are born wild animals and conditioned into society.
After all, if people mis-behaved without fear of punishment there'd be no need for Police, Courts, Law in fact the whole judicial system, purely on the basis of being able to reason with the perpertrator. (In the instance of a small child this is fruitless anyway as right-brain activity tends to dominate thought process at an early age hence the lack of analytical judgement and reasoning).
Instead even as adults we are required to behave in a civilised manner and in accordance with rules. Those that don't
usually wind up receiving some sort of repercussive punishment for their actions. If capital punishment doesn't deter a murderer from commiting the crime, then no deterrent will and unfortunately that's life.
You are always gonna get weirdo's, psycho's and the like 'cos of genetic diversity and poor parenting etc. No punishment works with such people as they're normally in the realms of mental upheaval/disturbance and thus not of clear thought or deed, however it doesn't mean the rest of society wants to deal with them so they're punished to deter a recurrance.
What so in the case of the eleven year old gonaads mentioned for example?. If the child is of sound mind but unruly I say the parent has no choice but to punish that child, however that should have been done years ago in the formative years. If it had i'm confident the problem wouldn't have arisen.
If a very young child is told not to do something and it deliberately disobeys, it's usually them testing the water to see how much it can get away with. If the child repeats the same process despite warnings, the threat of
a smack is not innapropriate. Not following that threat up undermines your own authority. Follow that threat up and you have a sulky child for a while, but no harm is
really done. Psychologically the parent has won the battle of will's and therefore is in authority. You only need do it once or twice then they usually get the idea that if you threaten them with it, you'll more than likely do it so it's not worth the chance.
Anyway i'm waffling and have digressed off-topic for a while, but yeah, the idea of these camps is all wrong. As someone else said earlier, it's the parent(s) who have failed, and the punishment should be their's.